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SUMMER SERMONS 



BY 

EDWARD T. HORN 



READING. PA. 

PILGER PUBLISHING HOUSE 

1908 



LIBRARY of CONCUSS.? 
I wo Soplos iieceivca 

MAY 22 1908 
1^- 20 hy s. 






Copyright, 1908, by Edward T. Horn. 



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There comes to mind a little Church in a village 
in the mountains of North Carolina, to which we used 
to go on Sundays. Men and women of all religious 
beliefs gathered there, because it was the only place of 
worship in the whole region. And after the prayer and 
song and the lesson from the Scriptures a ruddy farmer, 
with a delightful English accent, read a short sermon 
from a little book. The sermons were so pithy, though 
simple, and in their simplicity and brevity were so 
suitable, that I asked our good reader where he had 
found them ; but he could say only that an English lady 
long ago had put the book into his hands. 

Then I remember never-to-be-forgotten summers 
spent high up on the bosom of Glassy Mountain, when 
we "had Church" for ourselves ; the children with their 
Church Books, and the old cook' and nurse restraining 
their more ardent piety to join with us ; when, after the 
Service of the day, we read one of Goulburn's medita- 
tions on the Collects, or another brief sermon. 

I have been reminded of those days by recent discus- 



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sions of the work unordained men can do, where there 
is no pastor. In far-off places, in country-houses and 
summer resorts, where there is no Church service or 
one cannot go to it, and perhaps in sickrooms, I hope 
that these Summer Sermons may be of use. 



CONTENTS. 



I. JESUS OF CAPERNAUM. 

Matt. 9: 1 7 

II. THE LORD'S BROTHER. 

1 Cor. 15: 7 19 

III. MARCUS AND DEMAS. 

Philemon 24 29 

IV. STEPS IN SPIRITUAL GROWTH. 

Luke 5: 1-11 37 

V. THE CONSTITUTION OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 

John 21: 15-17 49 

VI. NEIGHBOURS. 

Luke 10: 36 61 

VII. OTHER MEN. 

Luke 18: 11 71 

VTII. BIRDS. 

Matt. 6: 26 83 

IX. A GLIMPSE OF ST. PAUL'S HEART. 

Rom. 9: 1-5 93 

X. SOME PRINCIPLES OF OUR LORD'S THINKING. 

Matt. 18: 35 105 

XI. DALLY THANKSGIVING. 

Luke 17: 17, 18 115 

XII. THINGS THAT CANNOT BE SHAKEN. 

John 18: 37, 38 125 



6 CONTENTS. 



Page 

XIII. HOW A MAN MAY BE ASSURED OF HIS SALVA- 

TION. Luke 12: 32 133 

XIV. THE GIFT OF THE SPIRIT. 

I Cor. 12: 3 143 

XV. A CHANGE OF HEART. 

Eph. 4: 23 151 

XVI. THE CHARACTERISTIC VIRTUE OF CHRISTI- 

ANITY. 

Phil. 4: 5 159 

XVII. THE INNER LIFE. 

Col. 3: 3 167 

XVIII. THE COMFORT OF THE SCRIPTURES. 

Rom. 15: 4 175 

XIX. AN ANTIDOTE TO GRIEF. 

Luke 7: 12-15 183 

XX. ETERNITY. 

Eph. 3: 21 193 



SEKMON I. 

Jesus of Capernaum. 

Matt. 9: 1. "He entered into a ship, and passed over, and 
came into his own city." 

[Nineteenth Sunday After Trinity. ,] 



It has been often urged in excuse of the wrongdo- 
ing of eminent men that inasmuch as they are raised 
above ordinary mortals, they may not be judged and 
condemned by the same narrow rule of morals. A great 
genius, for instance, who seems not only to have in- 
vestigated every subject, but to have penetrated their 
secrets by a sort of intuition, and whose words irradiate 
life and have become fruitful seeds in our civilization, 
was guilty of impurity, selfishness and unfaithfulness; 
yet his adherents urge that it was the completeness of 
the man which raised him above the ordinary rules 
for conduct. And there was an English poet, whose 
petulance and gloom and vice and meanness are sup- 
posed to have been atoned for by his genius. Such men 
call themselves cosmopolitans. They spurn the re- 
straints of local custom. They sometimes revile and 
always despise the petty ideals of village morality and 



SUMMER SERMONS 



those who are bound by them. Because they are great 
they think they may be a law unto themselves; or, in 
other words, claim that they are bound by no law at all. 

This claim is refused by every calm and plain 
man. Even a poet or an artist or a philosopher is a 
very unpleasant neighbour or brother, if he holds him- 
self free of all the restraints which are our protection 
as well as our bonds. If such an one is careless of the 
distinction between Mine and Thine, if he does not pay 
his taxes, if he commits indecencies, if he revels when 
his townsmen would worship, if he sets the laws at de- 
fiance, there are not a few that think he had better 
be sent far away and made to live alone. The much- 
vaunted citizen of the world is one whom no city would 
care to own. 

In contrast with this pitiable theory, our Lord, 
than whose no mind was wider and whose thoughts have 
given life to men for eighteen centuries, came into His 
own city. That city, Capernaum, we may be sure was 
not constituted or administered according to His pref- 
erences. He was a very humble citizen and probably 
had no voice in any of its acts. Many of its expendit- 
ures doubtless seemed to Him oppressive, wasteful and 
bad. To be a citizen was sometimes burdensome. Yet 
Jesus came and allowed Himself to be known as a man 



JESUS OF CAPERNAUM 



of Capernaum, in the same sense in which you are 
called citizens of N. 

This fact will yield several useful lessons. It dis- 
poses at once of our tendency to think Jesus shadowy 
and unreal. The apparitions of which the Bible tells 
vanished before the eyes of the spectators ; and if they 
are said to have eaten, that might have been an illusion. 
Christ, we are told, was weary and slept; was hungry 
and eat ; and came to His own city, where His widowed 
mother lived, and a certain house usually received Him, 
and where, when a census of His quarter was taken, 
Jesus of Nazareth was always reckoned in. All the 
circumstances forbid us to think that His home was in 
the more comfortable part of the town. Down near 
the wharves or fishermen's landing-places, in closely- 
built streets, narrow and ill-smelling, and among un- 
savoury people, Jesus of Nazareth was daily seen walk- 
ing when He was at home. — Let us pause on that 
thought for a moment. See a man coming along the 
way, past the revelers, speaking courteously to the fish- 
ermen as they come up laden, and to the goodwives as 
they stand at their doors shading their eyes while they 
look for the home-coming men, and giving a flower or a 
smile to the half-clad children who turn their soiled 
faces up to Him. As He goes by, one turns to the other 



10 SUMMER SERMONS 

and says, "It is Jesus of Nazareth come again;" and 
another wonders whether He is going to the house of 
Peter to see the sick; and a third tells some wonderful 
story that her husband has heard of His cures. His 
face and form are as familiar to them as are those of 
any citizen of !N". to his townsmen and neighbours. 

The next fact that we come upon is that our Lord 
fulfilled the duties of a citizen. His answer to those 
who asked whether it was lawful to give tribute to 
Caesar or not, establishes this; and His conversation 
with Peter and the miracle by which a fish yielded the 
necessary coin, show that He paid His taxes. I might 
even say that there is a bit of humour in what He said 
to Peter on that occasion, which exposes the fallacy of 
every claim to be above the law. 

Certainly this is a very remarkable lesson to us. 
Our Lord, although founding a new and heavenly king- 
dom, and in every respect as unearthly as we can imagine 
a man to be, filled His place in our common, humdrum 
and earthbound life. He did not find the walls of that 
city-lodging too narrow; and if the demands of the 
government were excessive, He did not say so. He was 
not so disgusted with the manner of the government 
as to declare He would have nothing to do with it ; but 
He became a good subject and was rated in His own 



JESUS OF CAPERNA UM 1 1 

city. He did not urge His wonderful beneficence 
against His civic duty, but yielded to and even honoured 
the law, and paid the taxes although at that time so 
poor that neither He nor Peter had the requisite 
amount. He did not draw a veil of mystery around 
Him and earn an exaggerated reputation for sanctity 
by living apart, but had a home and neighbours, and 
came thither, and went in and out among them. They 
could watch Him. They might have detected incon- 
sistencies if there had been any; they certainly talked 
about Him, and would have invented slanders if there 
had been occasion ; they could estimate His private char- 
acter; and this, doubtless, the people He lived among 
knew much better than what He said and did on His 
journeys through the land. 

The lesson of this Gospel is therefore, first of all, 
that we may be sure of Jesus' companionship and sym- 
pathy in the definite duties of our ordinary life. We 
do feel His presence in Church; it is not hard to be- 
lieve He comes to the sickbed; His own groans and 
tears bring Him near to the mourner; but we are very 
apt to think Him far away when we go down to busi- 
ness, or have to move among our neighbours, or go to 
the primaries, or on election-day. To know that His 
eye is on us, sometimes would seem like a menace. Let 



BUMMER SERMONS 



it indeed be a warning. Let it keep us from the very 
appearance of meanness or dishonesty. But if any find 
their citizenship oppressive and ineffectual, if we grieve 
because wrong triumphs in spite of us, and because when 
we go about our civic duty we find our hands tied, our 
eyes hooded, while we are forced to go a way we do not 
wish, if there are more perplexity and cost than pleasure 
and safety in it; then let us remember that our Lord 
trode this way as well as the path of sorrow, and sancti- 
fied citizenship as well as the tomb, and will sustain 
and enable us in it. Let it make us clean and earnest 
and obedient and meek. It was meekness, I am sure, 
which more than any other quality characterized Him 
in His own city. 

But the Gospel may teach more than this. Our 
Lord came to His own city not to rest from His teach- 
ing nor to find a refuge from the disappointment He 
had met in the land of the Gergesenes. He did not 
go down to the house and mysteriously shut Himself 
from every one's view. He came in His higher char- 
acter and before His townsmen made His highest claim. 
Scribes and Pharisees crowded down to the little house 
in which He stayed, until they filled the courtyard with- 
in and blocked the passage. They were asking ques- 
tions, inwardly debating His purpose, and were sur- 



JESUS OF CAPERNAUM 13 

prised at His words. Meanwhile four sturdy friends, 
who knew, and knowing heartily believed in Him, be- 
cause they were unable to get at Him for the press, 
climbed to the roof and let down a paralytic on his 
couch right at the Saviour's feet. Doubtless, Jesus 
knew him, and saw that he was as much stained by 
sin as fettered by disease. It was easy to say, "Rise up 
and walk;" but He chose to excite the question of the 
Scribes and the amazement of all by saying, "Be of good 
cheer, son, thy sins be forgiven thee." And when they 
had rightly reasoned that no one can forgive sins but 
God only, He put the matter to a test, by a miracle on 
the man's body proving His power over his soul. No 
one can forgive sins but God only ; and in the midst of 
His neighbours and townsmen Jesus of Nazareth proves 
that He has the power of God. 

Our Lord on one occasion quoted the proverb, "A 
prophet is not without honour save in his own country." 
Home is indeed the realm of the best affections, but it 
is not the place for exorbitant claims and unearthly 
ideals. It may be that we idealize each other so, lov- 
ing brothers and sisters in spite of their faults, that we 
have no patience with their peculiarities. Home is the 
place where those are who can call us stupid or silly or 
unfair without mortal offence. They love us so that 



U SUMMER SERMONS 

they are quick to mark every eccentricity in us and to 
scourge it, lest it expose us to the criticism and ridi- 
cule of others. They are not apt to expect really great 
things of us; and if we seem to be extraordinary, are 
continually afraid we may do something ridiculous. 
This is good. It affords us an opportunity to try our 
beliefs and projects before we expose them to the world. 
I have no doubt the criticism of home saves us many a 
bitter hour. But it has a bad side too. Its atmosphere 
is fatal to enthusiasm. We cannot tell our loves, our 
ardent desires, our warmest admiration ; we dare not say 
out what we think of most. Those familiar, mocking 
lips blow away our ideals and tear the tinsel from the 
objects of our admiration; they demand proofs; and 
make the heavenly dreams we had seem to be the 
illusions of a troubled and unwholesome night. I ven- 
ture to say that if one of us had a peculiarly noble ob- 
ject in view, the attainment of which would strain every 
power to the utmost and demand long-continued sacri- 
fice, he would not be likely to tell it to his assembled 
household with an expectation of consent and sympathy. 
And it is this makes it so hard to be good, to as- 
sert our relationship with God, to try to act out our 
faith, before the eyes at home. If we could be perfect 
at once, if our temper was in no danger of being ruffled 



JESUS OF CAPERNA UM 1 5 

in a game; if we were unlikely ever to be harsh or un- 
just or unyielding or selfish; if our goodness were so 
thorough that we could make others happy by our mere 
presence; then there would be no hardship. Then we 
would be like the good people we read about, trans- 
forming our home-life like a magician, and dazzling 
the eyes which now look at us with so provokingly clear 
and just and unsympathetic criticism. But to profess 
to be a disciple of Christ in spite of all they know of 
us, is very hard. It is easier to give up the attempt 
and join the critics. It is far easier to be a Christian 
and to seem a saint apart from others, and for this rea- 
son many a sensitive soul fled to a hermitage in olden 
days. We, however, are shut in the not unpleasant 
walls of home. It is made the sphere of our Messiah- 
ship. If we cannot live like children of God there, we 
cannot be in the kingdom of heaven. If we are not 
willing to bear the contradiction we deserve, the obser- 
vation our every attempt will excite, we are not worthy 
of Him Who humbled Himself from the manger to the 
cross. 

It will be a comfort and a source of strength to all 
who feel this contrast between themselves and their 
ideal and shrink from the opinion of those who can see 
every fault, to know that our Lord made His highest 



SUMMER SERMONS 



claim before the people of His own city; and though 
He did not deserve their sneers, had to bear harder 
words than we must. "Is not this the carpenter's son ?" 
they said. "Do not we know His brothers and sisters ? 
this man blasphemeth." It is probable that He had to 
remove with His mother to Capernaum because His 
claim to superiority had outraged the people of Nazar- 
eth; and if His brothers and sisters had not accom- 
panied them to reproach Him daily for the hardships 
He had brought upon them, they must have remained in 
Nazareth in bitter consent with those who had rejected 
Him. There is reason to believe that many of His 
own family never believed in Him, and perhaps thought 
Him a foolish and presumptuous man. Here, while 
He spoke, Scribes and Pharisees thought evil in their 
hearts. Certainly many more marveled when He 
claimed to forgive sins, than believed. To me it is a 
stupendous thought that God should have borne all this 
scandal and littleness, this petty criticism and un- 
belief for us. If He was willing to start it afresh by 
forgiving a poor man's sins, ought we not willingly bear 
what comes upon us when we profess that we are for- 
given and are sons of God and are trying to grow into 
His likeness ? He has gone before us through this trial 
and will help us in it. 



JESUS OF CAPERNA UM 1 7 

I said our Lord came to His own city not to rest. 
!Nor was it only to amaze the learned and to teach. He 
approved of the act of the four who brought the para- 
lytic. He came to do good in His own city. In Naz- 
areth He had not done many wonderful works because 
of their unbelief. He was eager at Capernaum to 
bring some relief to the sick He had learned to know 
and pity, and to the infected souls whose faces He had 
read with pain. It seems clear that He knew the para- 
lytic. There must have been keener joy in touching 
the bent and pain-racked and withered that He had 
seen every day He went along the street ; so that after- 
wards all the way from the market-place down that 
narrow and unclean street, there were beaming faces 
to meet His, and happy children to run to Him, to drive 
away the shadow cast by an unkind insinuation or mer- 
ciless curiosity. His days at Capernaum seem to have 
been crowded with such good works. He healed 
the fever-stricken and the palsied ; He spoke in the syna- 
gogue ; He gave speech to the dumb ; He made the blind 
see; He raised the dead; and He forgave sins. I am 
sure that if this Gospel encourages all citizens with the 
truth that Jesus is with them in their civic duties ; and 
all who shrink from the criticism of home by Jesus' 
straight-forward and mighty victory in the presence 



18 SUMMER SERMONS 

of His neighbours ; it is also a word of strength to those 
who would do good to those nearest them and make of 
their daily walks a path of light. 



SERMON II. 

The Lord's Brother. 

1 Cor. 15: 7. After that He was seen of James. 



St. Luke tells us that after His passion our Lord 
showed Himself alive by many infallible proofs. He 
not only appeared often during the forty days between 
the Resurrection and the Ascension, but He appeared 
to many different persons. The variety of these per- 
sons, and the variety of these especial appearances, sug- 
gest matter for profitable thought. 

Besides those occasions on which our Lord met 
His disciples while they were together- — as on Easter 
night and on the Sunday after and on the mountain in 
Galilee, where above five hundred were assembled — it 
is written that Mary Magdalene saw Him alone; He 
appeared especially to Peter; He spent a good while 
with the two who went to Emmaus; He was careful to 
meet the natural objection of Thomas; He joined the 
seven by the Sea of Galilee ; He appeared to James ; and 



20 SUMMER SERMONS 

He vouchsafed a vision of Himself to St. Paul, as to 
one born out of due time. 

No doubt in each of these appearances our Lord 
had a special object in view. And when we consider 
how different the persons were to whom He came, and 
how various the doubts He thus answered or the faults 
He thus corrected, it will not seem improper to de- 
scribe these appearances of our Lord after the Resur- 
rection as a continued ministry. We see in it the 
same loving care of souls which we discern in all that 
passed between Him and the Twelve during the years of 
His humiliation ; and also, we see in it our Lord's care- 
ful provision for His church. He busies Himself before 
His Ascension in selecting and enlisting and prepar- 
ing for the work the various dispositions and gifts 
which answer to each other and are necessary to the 
service of the Gospel. 

It adds to the value of these stories as proofs of the 
Eesurrection of our Lord that in them is shown that 
people who were totally different from each other, were 
convinced that Christ had risen from the dead. It 
needed no little to convince the simple and loving John, 
who mourned in his Master a beloved Friend, and who, 
having clung to Him through the trial, received His 
last words and parting bequest, that that beloved Friend 



THE LORD'S BROTHER 21 

had actually come back and might be seen with the eyes 
and handled with the hands. Yet the proof sufficed 
also for the meditative Philip, and skeptical Thomas, 
and outspoken Peter, and the severe James, and im- 
petuous Mary Magdalene. That all of these — on the 
ground of separate and varied interviews with Him — 
were convinced that He that had died was alive again, 
is a proof of the reality of our Lord's Resurrection. 

But, though we derive this confirmation of our 
faith from all these stories together, each of them may 
yield us a lesson of its own. 

In our text we have merely a mention of an appear- 
ance of our Lord to His brother James — an appearance 
nowhere else described, and which justifies our opinion 
that only a few of our Lord's post-resurrection inter- 
views have been recorded. There is something suggest- 
ive in "the silences" of Scripture. Here are suggested 
those deep thoughts which every man has, but no man 
can tell, and which in some men lie unsuspected by all 
others ; deep thoughts which the Saviour knows and to 
which He speaks; yet what He says there can be gath- 
ered only from the further acts to which His whisper 
leads. What passed between our Lord and James we 
are not told. We are to draw our lessons only from 
the outside of the event. The point to keep in view is 



SUMMER SERMONS 



that besides the wonderful appearances to the Apostles 
which are recorded, our Lord Jesus Christ after His 
Kesurrection appeared in secret to James, not one of the 
Apostles, but His brother according to the flesh. 

Kemember the long-past days in Galilee, when they 
were little children together — kissed by the same 
mother, eating at the same board, going to school hand 
in hand, listening to the same grave stories in the twi- 
light, playing together on the hillside, with the glorious 
hills and the skies around them. Do you bearded men 
ever turn back to the homes you left long ago? Are 
you able to recall the faces of the men and women who 
have been taken away from the earth perhaps, or, if 
they have not, have made so many interests of their 
own and gone through so much you did not share, that 
all that binds you now is a certain painful little feel- 
ing in your hearts ? There was a good deal in James's 
character which from the first must have made him dear 
to the older Jesus; surely Jesus must have been lovely 
in the eyes of James. There is a tradition concern- 
ing the latter that Mary consecrated him to God from 
his birth ; that he lived the life of a Nazarite ; his hair 
never was shorn, he never tasted wine nor strong drink, 
he was devotedly religious ; and his later life shows that 
he was pure, severe in his piety, benevolent, and patri- 



THE LORD'S BROTHER 23 

otic in the extreme. He shows us the simple earnest- 
ness of that godly family. And in that simple earnest- 
ness these two, the Son of God and the son of Joseph, 
went hand in hand. Yet as they grew up there were 
points at which their characters widely parted. James 
was but human and his piety was incomplete. His 
vision was narrow. He was quick to judge and a little 
harsh. He was not able to understand our Lord, Who 
was perfectly good without fanaticism, pure yet readily 
sympathizing with bad people, and fresh as the moun- 
tain air itself over against the stifling religiousness of 
Jewish teachers. Neither did his Messiahship answer 
to the pattern of James's or even Mary's expectation. 
So we find that James and the other brothers did not 
follow Jesus; they even interposed to check Him; on 
one occasion they offered foolish but well-meant advice ; 
and when He was crucified they were so thunder-strick- 
en that they even forsook their mother as she wept at 
the foot of the cross. You may be sure that this sepa- 
ration was not one of the least of the sufferings of our 
Lord. 

Now to this man our Lord gives a special revela- 
tion. Maybe our Lord met him in the place where he 
lay hidden; perhaps it was among familiar scenes in 
Nazareth or Capernaum. I shall not be so foolish as 



2Jf SUMMER SERMONS 

to try to invent a description of the meeting of those 
brothers. Enough, that it perfectly satisfied James 
that Jesus had been declared to be the Son of God with 
power by the resurrection from the dead. From that 
time forth he was a Christian; and very soon was at 
the head of the church at Jerusalem; and, though the 
faithful of that day delighted in calling him the Brother 
of the Lord, he wrote himself in his Epistle, James, the 
bondman of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ. 

There is a world of instruction in this proof that 
His mysterious suffering and glorious resurrection did 
not extinguish our Lord's natural affection. Even in 
the possession of ,the glory which He had with the 
Father before the world was, our Lord loves His brother 
— His narrow, but good and honest brother. If we 
learn the lesson of filial piety from His words concern- 
ing His mother when He hung upon the Cross, we see in 
this brotherly love what wonders are involved in being 
brothers and sisters — what wonders in the simple rela- 
tionships of village-homes. 

Is not this a hint of what is called heavenly recog- 
nition? Does not this tell us that the relationships of 
earth are meant to be everlasting? I say are meant to 
be, not are; for we cannot deny that we turn from God's 
purpose. But does it not seem that those whom God 



THE LORD'S BROTHER 



has put together He means shall belong together forever ? 

If this be so — to compare things small with great — 
and if ye be risen with Christ, can you not, will you not, 
try so to reveal that resurrection of the Lord to those 
who belong to you, as to transfigure and eternize the 
relations between you and them? If the light has 
shined on you, let it shine through you on your brother 
and sister, on the whole home, that you may endure 
forever, brothers and sisters in the Lord. 

Hold the picture then — the risen Jesus and James 
together : the solemn loving talk, from which the brother 
emerges the bondman of the Lord. 

There is another point of view from which this 
story becomes very useful to us. James was not only 
our Lord's brother, but he was a man whose natural 
disposition and conscientious habits made it very hard 
for him to believe. He found it hard to believe in a 
Kingdom of God which upset Judaism or seemed to. 
He found it hard to believe in a suffering and cruci- 
fied Christ. And I suppose he would have found it 
hard to believe on hearsay that Jesus had risen from 
the dead. 

Unbelief of the Christian revelation may result 
from different causes. It sometimes is but the utter- 
ance of selfishness — it is an intense aversion to the Cross. 



26 SUMMER SERMONS 

Sometimes it comes out of worldliness. It is caused by 
dissipation of mind, soul and spirit. Men and women 
leave themselves neither time nor power to think earn- 
estly. Sometimes it is the excuse of vice. Far often- 
er than you might be inclined to admit, the objections 
which may be urged to the Gospel of Christ come out 
of a perverted heart. 

It would be wrong, however, to say that this is 
always the case. In the case of Thomas, the Lord 
answered a man who demanded proofs. And James 
represents the many good men who are good yet are 
deprived of the comfort of faith in Christ by their 
narrow devotion to incomplete theory. 

James was a good Jew. He was no Pharisee, but 
a Nazarite — something like persons we know, who walk 
by rule, abstain from all sinful indulgence, are regular 
in prayer, and careful in paying tithes. He was strict, 
rigid; yet narrow. He could not see beyond Judaism. 
He did not understand what it is to let the whole life 
flow out of love to God. Whether it be true or not, it 
is said of him that, after he became a Christian, to the 
end of his life he wore priestly linen and on his forehead 
the words, Holiness to the Lord; and while Paul and 
even Peter carried the glad tidings to all the peoples of 
the world, he made his knees hard by daily prostrations 



THE LORD'S BROTHER 27 

in the Temple to supplicate the mercy of God on the 
nation that was rejecting Christ. If I might character- 
ize him at the time of the resurrection of our Lord, I 
would say he had not got in his Catechism beyond the 
Ten Commandments ; he had not learned the Creed. 

It was very hard for James to accept what required 
a complete overturning of all he ever had believed, yet 
believed so earnestly, so unselfishly. See, then, that 
our Lord respected, while He did not approve, this 
incompleteness; and while careful to absolve and rein- 
state Peter, He is equally prompt to remove the obstacles 
to the faith of James. If the one case proves His kind- 
ness to a penitent, this proves His insight into and pity 
for a man entangled by his own conscience. To the man 
of theory He gives a revelation of His person; to the 
man of conscience He gives a vision of the Life. This is 
just what earnest men need — faith in the living Christ. 
And James having received it, his peculiar gifts, his 
intense and limited devotion, resting on an actual knowl- 
edge of the risen Lord, made him peculiarly useful in 
the subsequent history of the Church. 

This is valuable to us as a revelation of our Lord's 
loving-kindness. The lesson, I conceive, may be applied 
to other imperfections than those of James. These 
stories have been written to show that our Lord marks 



SUMMER SERMONS 



and answers all sorts of human limitation. They are a 
promise that He will supply to every one whatever he 
lacks. 

Certainly it rebukes us if we misjudge those whose 
imperfect theory divides them from Christ; but it also 
urges all earnest men to examine and correct the imper- 
fection of their own un-Christly theory of life. And by 
it they are admonished to heed whatever new revela- 
tion the Lord may make to them. If by the joys and 
accumulating sorrows of life the conviction of another, 
of a spiritual, life is brought home to them, let them 
admit it ; nor let them refuse the confession that rises to 
their lips, Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the 
words of eternal life. 

Dear friends, if we would share with our Lord 
Jesus Christ all those lowly experiences of life in which 
He was tempted as we are, yet without sin, and live out 
our conscientious convictions under His eye and in His 
light, He will come to us as He did to His brother 
James, and constrain us to be His servants. 



SERMON III. 

Marcus and Demas. 

Philemon 24. Marcus, Demas, my fellow -labourers. 



The true story of a man's life cannot be uninstruc- 
tive. If he be a failure, a rebel against society, or in 
every sense the most fortunate of men, his inner life 
will supply many illustrations of conclusions to which 
our own experience leads, and an answer to many ques- 
tions which vex thinking men. Those who were closer 
to our Lord serve at least to make His Gospel clearer, 
as it is said light is reflected from the atoms which com- 
pose our atmosphere; and the men who surrounded the 
Apostle Paul, though not so distinctly described in the 
history, both explam him and throw additional light 
on the truth he preached. We may learn from two of 
his co-workers, St. Mark and Demas, who is not called 
a saint. 

Both were with St. Paul at Rome while he was writ- 
ing the letters to the Colossians and to Philemon. They 
were at work, and the Apostle thought them worthy to 
be called his fellows. Mark seems ever to have come 



SUMMER SERMONS 



nearer to him, is warmly commended and wished for, 
and his usefulness in ministry to the captive Apostle 
is written for the admiration of all ages; but the last 
we shall hear of Demas is that he forsook Paul and went 
to Thessalonica, having loved this present world. 

We can gather a great deal concerning Mark's life. 
His mother was a pious woman; her house a meeting- 
place of the Apostles in the earlier days after our Lord's 
resurrection; there he met those wonderful men, heard 
their fresh stories of the Saviour, felt the thrill of their 
devotion, and joined with them while they poured out 
their hearts to the Kisen Lord and claimed His protec- 
tion without a doubt. When Paul and Barnabas return- 
ed to Antioch, he accompanied his unselfish relative. 
And when those two set forth upon their first missionary 
journey, who was so ready to go with them as John Mark 
— this young man with a youth's eagerness to see the 
world and a youth's zeal in the Gospel. But his zeal 
cooled as the novelty wore off in unsympathetic places, 
and either because he was homesick, or self-indulgent, 
or offended at something, or out of tune with the unrest- 
ing Paul and the selfless Barnabas, he forsook them 
when their work was half done and returned to Jerusa- 
lem. Barnabas wished to take him on the next journey, 
pitying his fault and trusting his repentance, but Paul 



MARCUS AND DEMAS 31 

rather separated from his noble companion than imperil 
the work by having so unworthy a helper. Mark went 
with Barnabas. His sin had done him good. He never 
forsook his master again. He worked steadily and care- 
fully. He so kept the recollection of his fall, that he be- 
came most useful to St. Paul, most active in the 
churches, a son to Peter, a writer of a Gospel, and, it is 
said, finally head of the Church at Alexandria. Of 
Demas we know that he forgot his first love. He was a 
fellow-worker with Paul but ended in loving this present 
world. Doubtless, the Apostle's hopeless captivity, a 
sombreness that crept over that great man as his end ap- 
proached amid many sorrows caused by false brethren, 
the meanness of the Church, its dissensions, the comfort 
he had left, the voice of nature and friends, some good 
opportunity to make a living, tore him from his place 
in that prison-lodging and won him his biting epitaph. 
These two men had much in common. Both fell. 
Both were Christian men. They had been baptized 
and there is no reason to think their faith unreal. 
Both worked witK the Apostle in a place and time 
which demanded labour and sacrifice. Both had shared 
in the confidence of that wonderful man, who was in 
the confidence of God, whose faith upholds, whose 
words still instruct, us. Both frequently received the 



SUMMER SERMONS 



Sacrament and were in communion with all the means 
by which the Lord builds np His Church and makes 
men good; and though their experience might widely 
differ, God cared for both equally. 

They are unlike. Demas' fall is the last we hear 
of him; Mark fell but rose again. From his weak- 
ness, Mark learned wisdom. Paul's severity towards 
him at Antioch did not offend, it put him to shame. 
It made him think. It slew his old self. Doubtless, 
that was the turning-point of his life. He saw the 
abyss. Thenceforth he strove upward. It is good to 
find out early how bad we would be if left to ourselves ; 
how near we are to being losels; how it is but the 
turning of a hand whether we shall be hellish. At 
the Delectable Mountains the shepherds showed Chris- 
tian the mouth of hell. Those of us who know how 
contemptibly weak we are, will be more careful to go 
on safe ways and keep under sure protection. Mark 
used God's Providence and His help in the Church 
wisely. Demas, in the midst of the same grace, tired 
of it. Did he trust himself and face both ways ? Did 
he lay off the armour now and then? Did he mix 
the world with Christianity in careless draughts? Or 
did he drop the whole work in despair? He forsook 
Paul, because he loved this present world. 



MARCUS AND DEMA8 83 

The lesson — Weeds and flowers grow in the same 
earth. Fatten the ground and both will flourish. 
Tares and wheat grow together to the harvest. In 
the midst of the miraculous powers of the Church are 
children of the evil one and children of God. We who 
ought to know ourselves children of God, are mixtures ; 
we have the bad in us as well as the good; both are 
active; we must be careful; we must watch and pray; 
we must weed ourselves ; while we may grow from our 
sins to holiness like Mark, we may fall from usefulness 
to shame like Demas. 

It is impossible for us to judge one another — I sup- 
pose it is often impossible for us to decide whether we 
are growing a little or slipping back. I hear much 
criticism of churchmen and know it is deserved; yet 
it is probable that few are hypocritical who approach 
the Holy Communion. Those who come are more 
likely to be mixed characters, like these two. All of 
you are mixed characters. I see faults in you; you 
know of more ; you know some of your virtues ; we 
see more ; the mere desire to be good is good because 
it is God's gift, and the inward constraint which will 
not let you forsake the Table of the Lord, even though 
you feel the immense contrast it suggests, is also God's 
gift. The dreadful battle is going on in you. The 



34 SUMMER SERMONS 

good is stronger and will win if you do not turn 
against it. What matter if others criticise you; what, 
if others praise you? St. Paul was mistaken with 
regard to Mark; he was too hard on him; and, on the 
other hand, he put too much confidence in Demas. 

Here, '"then, is a double lesson for us. The first, 
that we must not be amazed if all our efforts to make 
some one good, fail. Enough, that we can detect many 
faults in our way of helping them. St. Paul failed 
not only with such as Gallio and Felix, whom he saw 
but little of, who moved in a different world and had 
great temptations, but even with one who had turned 
away from self and enjoyed the heavenly comfort 
and lived with him most intimately. And our Lord 
failed with Judas. 

Secondly, let us not despair of any man as long as 
he lives. Some whom I thought insensible to spiritual 
considerations, have amazed me by the disclosure of 
a conflict like my own. How can we tell what is go- 
ing on in any heart ? Processes of good are often hid- 
den from those in whose hearts they are. I believe 
no one here is untouched by the Spirit of the Lord. 
Even those who seem to have broken from us and our 
prayers, may come back like the Prodigal. Paul did 
not suspect what was going on in Mark when he re- 



MARCUS AND DEMAS S5 

jected him at Antioch. Barnabas was much wiser 
to give him opportunity to recover himself. We do 
not know that even Demas did not with tears seek a 
place of repentance when old age showed him what 
this present world is worth. 

There is comfort in such proofs that the early 
Church, which accomplished so much, was made up 
of material like this. It encourages those who know 
how likely they are to fall, who are humbled by the 
recollection of a great sin, or are compelled to fight 
hard to overcome temptation, to believe that the work 
of the Lord may prosper in their hands. 

Remember that both Mark and Demas were Chris- 
tians. Mark did not become a Christian only at the 
end of his life, nor did his fall prove that Demas 
never had been a Christian. At the time Paul wrote 
these words both were sincere. Each had his tempta- 
tions; before each was great danger; yet each was in- 
delibly marked by his Baptism and each was sustained 
by the Holy Communion. When Mark had fallen, it 
was by God's grace that he recovered. The Divine 
Light awakened him. He did not grope his way back 
to goodness unaided. "Not for a moment did the strife 
in his heart cease. And Demas, though he leaves St. 
Paul and goes back to Thessalonica, can never quite 



SUMMER SERMONS 



rid himself of those holy recollections and influences. 
Demas the Christian — the man baptized — the man 
who once prayed to Christ and received His Spirit — 
who has felt the joy of uttering the words of life — 
who has known the thrill of Christian brotherhood — 
who has imperiled his life with the Great Apostle — 
Demas is unlike the multitude who love this present 
world in this : he has forsaken the Apostle. 

Thus, among the wicked there are many who are 
Christian; and many an one, baptized into the Name 
of Christ, is even now turning from the work to the 
present world. With all such God's Spirit is now 
striving; to all such their baptismal grace does cling; 
all such — whatever their profession and their ideals — 
are simply Christians who are forsaking their Master. 
God grant that, like Mark, they may repent, that they 
may not always be like Demas. I shudder at his name. 



SEEMOff IV. 

Steps in Spiritual Growth, 

Luke 5: 1-11. And it came to pass, that, as the people pressed 
upon Him to hear the word of God, He stood by the Lake 
of Gennesaret, and saw two ships standing by the lake; 
but the fishermen were gone out of them, and were wash- 
ing their nets. And He entered into one of the ships, 
which was Simon's, and prayed him that he would thrust 
out a little from the land. And He sat down, and taught 
the people out of the ship. Now when He had left speak- 
ing, He said unto Simon, Launch out into the deep, and let 
down your nets for a draught. And Simon answering 
said unto Him, Master we have toiled all the night, and 
have taken nothing; nevertheless at Thy word I will let 
down the net. And when they had this done, they in- 
closed a great multitude of fishes; and their net brake. 
And they beckoned unto their partners, which were in the 
other ship, that they should come and help them. And 
they came, and filled both the ships, so that they began 
to sink. When Simon saw it, he fell down at Jesus' feet, 
saying, Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, 
Lord. For he was astonished, and all that were with him, 
at the draught of the fishes which they had taken. And so 
was also James and John, the sons of Zebedee, which were 
partners with Simon. And Jesus said unto Simon, Fear 
not; from henceforth thou shalt catch men. And when 
they had brought their ship to land, they forsook all, and 
followed Him. 

[Fifth Sunday after Trinity.'] 



We shall be surprised by the number and direct- 
ness of the lessons of this Gospel, if we attend to the 
process in Peter's mind and compare it with the com- 



SUMMER SERMONS 



monest facts and difficulties of our own lives. Here 
Peter, John and James were engaged in their ordinary 
business, although they had already met Jesus and 
admired Him. The notion of His Kingdom and their 
own extraordinary place in the history of the world had 
not entered their minds. The care of their families, the 
engrossing duties of a firm of fishermen, the disap- 
pointment of a night of hard work in which they had 
caught nothing, pressed upon them; and, while they 
bent over their nets to wash them, I doubt not they 
had many bitter thoughts of the hard times and un- 
favourable season, of loss and want. 

While they were so engaged, Jesus came to them. 
The first lesson, the verification of which I will leave 
to your own experience, is that Christ comes to us, 
God speaks to and touches us, in order to make us 
holy and effective, not at extraordinary times, but while 
we are engaged in the ordinary round of life. Many 
say, in answer to the solicitations of a pastor, that they 
have not now time to think of such things, and maybe 
promise to be more serious at a future time of leisure. 
But the Word of God concurs with our own experience 
to show that it is foolish to throw aside our work and, 
sitting down, expect God to come to us more really then. 
They show that our right duties are no obstacle to Him, 



STEPS IN SPIRITUAL GROWTH 39 

but rather that when we are doing what we ought to as 
carefully as we ought to, then He comes. 

This Gospel, I think, shows the progress of Di- 
vine illumination in the soul of a plain man; and 
therefore I shall say that the first step of a man towards 
God must be careful attention to the duties which are 
given him. 

The second thing we notice is Peter's kindness. 
Our Lord, pressed upon by a crowd who wished to hear 
Him, asked Peter to put out from the shore, to make 
of his boat a pulpit. Of course this interrupted his 
work. Peter lost time by it. Probably he lost money 
too. Yet it seems that he did it at once, without de- 
bate, without hesitation. That showed courtesy, a re- 
spect, a regard for Jesus, a degree of unselfishness and 
perhaps of unworldliness. He was willing to give 
something when asked for it ; to take from himself, to 
do a little work, to put himself to inconvenience, to 
oblige the Lord. 

Here I recognize a second step Godward. There 
are two kinds of men in every town. Of one you never 
ask anything, because you know they will not give it. 
If something is needed in the Church, furniture for 
it, ornament, or a contribution to its support; if a 
poor family is starving ; if you wish to be kindly to those 



40 SUMMER SERMONS 

in the hospital; if you wish help for the Synod or the 
Missions ; if there is a call for the miserable in another 
city; yon do not go to them — for of some of them you 
will get a gruff answer and of others only polite words. 
But there are men who give and like to give ; and better 
than giving, if there is need and opportunity, they will 
work. Some of these are .pious communicants; some 
have not yet risen so high — they hesitate and maybe 
criticise; but thus far they agree, thus far they heed 
the voice of the Lord, — when He asks something of 
them, either out of courtesy towards Him or proper 
feeling towards others they are willing to leave their 
nets and put out from the shore, to give a little time, 
a little effort, a little money; they yield to Him 
with all respect and listen while He speaks to the 
multitude. 

This is the second step towards real godliness. 
If a man neglects his duty in the world, he goes out 
of Christ's way. If a man immerses himself in his 
day's work, obstinately refuses to give it up for a 
moment, is deaf to every claim of kindliness, rever- 
ence, sympathy, he turns Christ away. A selfish man 
is ungodly. To persist in selfishness is to persist in 
ungodliness. To hold fast to everything, to keep and 
gather for one's self, to hold one's self absolved from 



STEPS IN SPIRITUAL GROWTH J>1 

fellowship with mankind — and then to expect grace 
of God, is frightful mockery. 

And now the third step. Our Lord never asks 
a favour without repaying it tenfold, though He never 
encourages us to do good as a speculation. When He 
had preached, He told Peter to launch out into the deep 
and let down his net for a draught. Peter had worked 
all night and caught nothing. He knew that the night 
was a better time for fishing than the day. Jesus was 
no fisherman. To an expert it seemed bare folly to 
throw the nets. Yet something in our Lord had won 
him at their first interview, and the impression had 
been deepened by the words just said to the people on 
the shore. It is important for us in estimating the 
character of our Lord as given to us in the Gospels, 
to note the influence His mere presence, the greater in- 
fluence His words had on those who knew Him but 
slightly. Therefore Peter said, "Nevertheless, at Thy 
word, I will let down the net." 

Though you live in these latter days, in a prosaic 
and unbiblical age, every one of you has heard our 
Lord's advice and perhaps His command in your busi- 
ness. When you are tempted to an ungenerous, mean 
or false act — and it is no aspersion on you to say that 
such temptations abound, that it is difficult for an ac- 



Jfi SUMMER SERMONS 

tive man to keep himself pure, that the market abounds 
in adulterations, the exchange is full of gamblers, trade 
and the professions are overcrowded with hypocrites, 
there is reason enough to encourage some to think that 
no one is above suspicion, frauds and indirection and 
sharp practices and lies are spoken of with an easy 
laugh, many a fair reputation is honey-combed, many 
a longhonoured life goes out in disgrace, — when, I 
sa y> y° u have been tempted to such wrongdoing, 
did not a voice urge you to desist ? And have you not 
often felt yourself driven or held to a fair and right 
course, which nevertheless seemed to threaten loss or 
ruin ? 

We have not always heeded that voice; and to our 
first disobedience we may trace the cares and burdens 
which have come to our daily life, the scorpion-whips 
which drive us to our daily work, the demon-faces which 
haunt the night. But this is the lesson, that the third 
step Godwards is to do what the Lord commands, to 
withhold the hand from what the Lord condemns, even 
when everything conspires to assure us that we know 
more about business than Christ does. 

By so doing, Peter got miraculous profit. The 
many fish he and his partners hauled to shore brought 
a large price, to be reckoned in coin. Such I do not 



STEPS IN SPIRITUAL GROWTH J,3 

promise to those who obey Christ now. It is better for 
you to cast your net at the Lord's word without a clear 
notion of the result. Yet I believe that no one obeys 
Christ unprofitably. The bread is sweeter that the 
obedient earn, the toil is lighter, it is ennobled, and the 
present and future are without care to him. And 
those who get in ways by Him condemned, are not pro- 
fited. It is as easy to lose. If the balance is ever 
struck, if one can estimate the loss of manliness and 
self-respect and peace of mind and place in others' 
confidence, and the obligations to others which they 
incur, and the slavery and mean companionship to 
which they give themselves, it shall be seen that the 
dollars won unrighteously are hot as hell and brand 
those who get them. 

But we have to notice not so much the great 
draught of fishes given to Peter by the miracle, as the 
effect of the miracle upon him. Peter had already 
been brought to a high regard for Jesus, and when 
he cast the net at the Lord's command after hearing 
the sermon to the multitude he doubtless expected some 
sort of parabolic teaching. Instead, he saw a miracle. 
The plain Man Whom he had been polite to, to Whom 
he had been able to show a favour, obedience to Whom 
had seemed to partake of condescension, displayed 



U SUMMER SERMONS 

superhuman power. The fishes of the sea obeyed Him. 
He seemed to know all things. In an instant Peter 
had made all the deductions from the wonderful fact 
and threw himself at the Lord's feet. Filled with 
wonder, amazed, touched unspeakably by the thought 
that God had come into his simple, earnest life, as 
angels had appeared and spoken to the prophets of 
old, all his unworthiness, the clinging to earth, the 
mannishness of his life and aims, rose before him and 
he cried, "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, 
O Lord." 

I remember to have analyzed that exclamation 
and to have traced its likeness to the answers of Moses 
and Isaiah to the call of God. It does not mean that 
Peter wished Jesus to go away. It is the utterance of 
devotion. It was instinctive. It was an honest man's 
confession of the difference between him and God, 
which such a miracle reveals as a flash of lightning on 
a dark night shows forms near to us more distinctly 
than we see them in the day. 

God speaks to us. If we take those intimations 
of duty, of which I have spoken, as the voice of God; 
and, when after many years we find that obedience 
to Him has brought us past perils on which other men 
were wrecked; if when sorrow invades our homes, 



STEPS IN SPIRITUAL GROWTH J>5 

or a dismal apprehension forces ns to earnestness in 
prayer, we see God in this; if we recognize the fact 
that the Most High not only mingles in our life but 
has taken hold of the springs of it, and changes and 
makes and unmakes, suggests, compels, reveals, deliv- 
ers; if somehow our eyes are opened to see the Incar- 
nate God sitting in the boat with us and giving what 
we despaired of — as some of us have seen Him; are 
not our hearts bowed? Do we not feel His irresisti- 
ble grasp? — as if a hot fire had touched and burned 
us to ashes ? Do we not dread it ? Does not the un- 
worthiness of our past life rise before us and the 
perils through which we have to go ? Do we not cry, 
"I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell among a 
people of unclean lips — depart from me, for I am a 
sinful man, O Lord." 

This has compelled many a godly soul to for- 
sake home and society. So bad are we, they thought, 
and we yield to temptation so readily, that we will go 
apart from men and in the desert bewail our sins; 
by self-inflicted misery we will atone for our wrong- 
doing and mortify the flesh; and all our time shall 
be given to prayer and devout meditation. 

This — rightly understood — is the next step God- 
wards — simply this, that when we feel that God has 



J>6 SUMMER SERMONS 

spoken to us, has wrought a miracle for us, has come 
into our lives, let not the moment pass but fall at His 
feet in adoration. Sum up His deliverances ; tell your 
sorrows, those wonderful instruments of spiritual bene- 
fit; remember the ties between you and Heaven; let 
not His strong grasp upon your heart relax; but fall 
at His feet, be devout. 

There remains a lesson, however, which for the 
present may be said to crown the spiritual development 
of men. Our Lord was not satisfied by Peter's adora- 
tion. He would not have His votaries prostrate, wring- 
ing their hands. His praise should not consist in tears 
of confession and vain wishes and a refusal to do, 
based on weakness. Multitudes have come so far as 
to feel an awe of Christ and the Bible and the Sacra- 
ment, a great desire, an equal dread. To these, our 
Lord says, "Follow Me." 

One night I was alone on the deck of a ship. The 
moon had not yet risen and a soft haze went up from 
the horizon until it obscured all but the highest stars. 
These burned more brightly by contrast. On both 
sides of the vessel its lights shone out upon the sea. I 
walked to the end of the deck. Behind was darkness. 
I could see but twenty feet of the black waves and the 
soft curtain seemed almost to enfold me. I felt as 



STEPS IN SPIRITUAL GROWTH tf 

if I was standing on the edge of immensity. One step 
and I should be safely in the world of the Infinite, 
which often seems so near. At such a moment one 
feels the value of himself — a living, breathing, think- 
ing, free, individual fact in the universe. I looked 
towards those stars above and thought of the Man 
who reigns above them — of the heart full of human 
sympathy, the Divine heart not unmindful of its hu- 
man development; I felt the bond between me and 
Him ; I was uplifted by the hope it gave ; I was crushed 
by the wonderful goodness and sacrifice it tells of; but 
never before did I feel so strongly the obligation to 
action contained in being as He was in the world. 
When He said, "Follow Me," it meant, not only de- 
votion, but going about doing good. 



THE CONSTITUTION OF THE 
CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 



SERMON V. 

The Constitution of the Christian Church. 

John 21: 15-17. So when they had dined, Jesus saith to Simon 
Peter, Simon, Son of Jonas, lovest thou me more than 
these? He saith unto Him, Yea, Lord; Thou knowest that 
I love Thee. He saith unto him, Feed my lambs. He saith 
to him again the second time, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest 
thou me? He saith unto Him, Yea, Lord; Thou knowest 
that I love Thee. He saith unto him, Feed my sheep. He 
saith unto him the third time, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest 
thou me ? Peter was grieved because He said unto him 
the third time, lovest thou me? And he said unto Him, 
Lord, Thou knowest all things; Thou knowest that I love 
Thee. Jesus saith unto him, Feed my sheep. 



"The Lord is risen indeed, and hath appeared 
to Simon/' this was the cry with which the two from 
Emmaus were greeted when they came among the 
Eleven on Easter night. No description has been 
given us of that first interview of the Lord and the 
fallen Apostle, much as we would like to know about 
it. This is one of the mysteries angels would like to 
look into — the dealing of the Risen Lord with a fallen, 
and doubtless a penitent, soul. We may gather from 
our text that the Lord had assured him forgiveness 
and restored him to a place among the Eleven; for 
here he is somewhat of a leader; and when John whis- 



50 SUMMER SERMONS 

pers of the form and voice upon the shore, "It is the 
Lord" Peter does not wait for the boat to come to land 
but leaps overboard in his haste; and he it is who at 
our Lord's word hurries to draw in the net filled with 
fishes; whether in irrepressible zeal or earnestness to 
show to others that the Lord admits him among them, 
I know not. Then, when the awesome meal was over, 
the Lord must have drawn Peter and John a little 
apart from the rest; — perhaps, as He withdrew, while 
the others gazed in wonder, Peter followed, drawn by 
irresistible curiosity and longing of love ; and John 
followed too, drawn by a slightly different feeling and 
encouraged by the boldness of Peter. Then, as they 
went, our Lord asked these questions of Peter. He 
asks repeatedly. They are searching questions. He 
rebukes Peter for comparing himself with the others. 
He makes him see he has been doing so. He drives 
him to reflect on his unworthiness — how little he de- 
serves to be trusted — how ready he was to promise and 
protest and boast; and as Peter sees himself more 
clearly and the whole compass of his ill-desert, he sees 
more clearly the goodness of the Lord in forgiving him, 
he feels that nothing can repay the unspeakable gift of 
God, he would do anything for Christ, and the repeated 
injunction, "Feed my sheep, Feed my lambs," the 



THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 51 

solemn call to service, becomes the most precious boon 
Jesus could give. Our Lord's absolution brings a 
duty. Our Lord's injunction confers forgiveness. 

Wbat was that duty? To take our Lord's place 
to them that are His. Before our Lord's Passion our 
Lord had foreseen Peter's trial and prayed for him, 
and said, "When thou art converted, strengthen thy 
brethren." His words here indicate that there are 
differences in the flock of Christ. They lay heavily on 
His heart. There were sheep, and lambs. He was 
about to leave them. To whom should He leave them ? 
He left them to those who knew Him and loved Him. 
And who could love Him more than one to whom much 
had been forgiven ? And who knew Him better than 
one who had tried His love to the utmost, had often 
been corrected, had still been trusted, had forsworn 
Him in His passion, yet had been received again to 
His inexhaustible mercy as soon as He had risen from 
the dead ? "Go," said He, "And as long as you live tell 
men what God has done for you. To every one that 
is tempted, to all the faulty, whose surging evil nature 
threatens to overwhelm judgment and principle, to 
the enthusiastic and thoughtless, and to the discour- 
aged, tell what you know to be true. Say to them, 
'The Shepherd seeks the lost. He suffers none to be 



52 SUMMER SERMONS 

plucked out of His hand. I sinned against Him. I 
outraged Him. I swore I never knew Him, while 
mockers struck and spit at Him. And yet He looked 
at me, and called me by name, and let me profess my 
shame and love again. I looked into His eye, and He 
said, I give you my work to do; I entrust to you my 
flock. I know that He loves me and lets me love Him." 
So Peter went forth, slowly to learn what the bidding 
meant, stumbling often, no doubt, as was his wont; 
yet trying to show to men the sympathy and patience 
God had for him, and to bring to all men and spread 
abroad the knowledge and enjoyment of that priceless 
love in which he stood. 

Dear friend, what has God done for you? I 
continually preach the forgiveness of sins. It sounds 
in every Gospel. It is sealed in every Sacrament. It 
meets us at every turn of the way. It greets us morn- 
ing and night. The forgiveness of sins — free, full, 
complete, this is the air we breathe, our daily bread. 
Who here doubts that there is forgiveness of sins? 
Who doubts that God hears his prayer and welcomes 
him to His Church and His love? Who doubts that 
Jesus poured out His blood for him? And in spite 
of what? O friend, it is a little thing that you were 
born sinful — that the blood of Christ has washed away ; 



THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 53 

but count the sins you have done, the good you have 
neglected, the evil you have chosen, the blessings you 
have refused: — how have you treated the offers of 
mercy, the very gifts of the Lord : often and again you 
have been like Peter in your own sight unworthy to 
be called a child of God. Yet still there is redemption 
for you, even the forgiveness of sins. You know that 
you have but to taste and see that the Lord is good. 
Do you love the Lord ? Have you any gratitude for 
His mercy? This is what He says to one whom He 
forgives and who therefore loved him — Feed my 
sheep, Feed my lambs. I go away. I am the Good 
Shepherd. I commit my nock to those who love 
Me, who feel that they owe Me every service in their 
power. 

We owe such service. We feel in conscience that 
we ought to do for His flock all we can. But how 
much it is, to take the Lord's place to His flock. It 
is to seek the lost : Other sheep I have; them also I must 
bring. It is rightly to divide the word of Truth — 
to herd the sheep, to give them good pasture, and to 
carry the lambs in our bosom. It is to make young 
and old to know Him, Whom to know aright is life 
eternal. It is to bind up the broken-hearted ; to strenth- 
en the weak; to bring back those who are astray; to 



5J,. SUMMER SERMONS 

bring the young and slow of mind to the knowledge of 
His truth. — This our Lord asks you and me to do 

This is the worthiest work a man or woman can do. 
At first it may not appear so. It may seem that some 
things are better — as to cultivate the mind, to win ad- 
miration, to amuse our days and nights, to succeed in 
making money, to rule the state. It may seem; but 
there is nothing in any of these aims. A simple act 
of kindness outweighs in worth all a man does for him- 
self. Now it is hard to imagine a greater act of kind- 
ness than to secure for one who needs it an opportunity 
to earn his living, or to give to a boy a training that will 
render him independent and useful. But compare 
even with this the benefit done by producing in any 
heart a correct and living knowledge of the inexhausti- 
ble mercy of God; by leading a man rightly to know 
himself and to appreciate and accept the mercy of God. 
Think of bringing a person who never had thought 
of it to the assurance that he may live in fellowship 
with God. A few may be happy without these greater 
truths; but very few. I read this week a sketch of 
the life of one of the richest men of our day who has 
lately died. In a very few paragraphs, the writer with- 
out intending to point a moral, told of a quarrel be- 
tween brothers, a demented uncle, a disinherited and 



THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 55 

outcast brother, social disappointment, and a death 
from anxiety and shame. But even if there might be 
an unclouded life, and even if all we had to aim at were 
present happiness, how true it is that the overwhelming 
majority of men have little comfort and much care. 
Who can estimate, then, the good that is done by telling 
men and convincing them of the love and pity Jesus had 
for Peter, and the loving-kindness He shows to you ! 

We do this by the maintenance of Divine Service 
in the Church. Too many rent just so much space in 
the Church for themselves and go to Church merely 
for their own reputation or gratification; not reflecting 
on what they do, or may do, to proclaim the Gospel, to 
bring men to Christ, to feed the lambs and tend the 
sheep of Christ, by the support of the services of the 
Church. — We do this by the spread of Christian mis- 
sions. Whenever we put our small contributions to- 
gether to send an additional messenger with the glad 
tidings to those who otherwise would not hear or heed 
it, we are seeking the scattered sheep. It is a peculiar 
privilege to send the precious message to the nations 
who never knew it; and think that in consequence of 
our endeavour some day children will be baptized into 
the fold as ours have been, and like ours will be taught 
these Commandments and Bible stories, and like us will 



56 SUMMER SERMONS 

be comforted by the Father in heaven Whom Jesus 
Christ has declared to us. — We do this by our work in 
N the Sunday School and the Christian training of chil- 
dren in the home. A child is one of Christ's lambs. 
Of him is certainly is true that he has been bought with 
a price. In an especial manner the Lord has committed 
them to us. One might deny his obligation to give 
the Gospel to the heathen, and to set an example to other 
men, but who can deny his obligation to the lambs of 
the flock? If we do not feed the children, they will 
starve ; if we do not clothe them, they will be naked ; 
if we do not teach them, they will be ignorant. We 
owe them a good example. We teach them manners. 
We must guard them against distorted views and wrong 
principles. And we owe it to the Lord as well as to 
the young children, who are given to us, that they be 
brought up in the fear of the Lord. Woe to him who 
offends one of these little ones. Whoever gives one of 
them a cup of cold water, shall not lose his reward, 
And if you love the Lord, He asks to see it in the care 
of His lambs. 

We do this by showing a Christian example. A 
man can act as if he felt that he had no one to please but 
himself; and on the other hand, he can plainly show 
that he is not his own. If he feels that he belongs to 



THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 



Christ, if lie bears in the depths of his heart the con- 
viction that while he was yet ungodly Christ died for 
him, and daily forgives abundantly all his sins, he will 
be tenderhearted, forgiving his fellowmen as God for 
Christ's sake forgives him, and he will bear his fellows' 
burdens and so fulfil the law of Christ. Nothing so 
proclaims the Gospel as this. All the preaching would 
long ago have been in vain, but for the witness of the 
martyrs, the patience of the saints. The Cross of 
Christ abides as a reality and is impressed on the con- 
science as on the history of mankind, and still is the sign 
in which the Church conquers, because of those who 
deny themselves and take up their cross and follow after 
Christ. 

And we do this by personal Christian effort among 
men. It will be the impulse of every renewed heart 
(and that man is renewed who buries his old man with 
Christ and with Him rises to newness of life) to take 
and fill every Christian office to which he may be 
called. In that office to do his utmost for Christ and 
for His flock. And in that office always to speak the 
word in season — the word of warning, the word of 
correction, the word of truth, the word of comfort, the 
word of forgiveness, the word of hope! — Surely 
this is not too much to build upon our text. Thus 



58 SUMMER SERMONS 

St. Paul cried, "It is a faithful saying and worthy of 
all acceptation that Christ Jesus died for sinners: of 
whom I am chief" ; and setting up Christ as a model 
for every man, he pressed forward to fill up in his 
own body that "which was lacking" of the sufferings 
of Christ. 

But it is not to be forgotten that while in one 
sense we are undershepherds — bound to watch over 
and feed the flock of Christ — on the other we are 
members of His flock, His lambs and His sheep. We 
are those He has entrusted to those who love Him. 
And consider how we have enjoyed the care of the 
followers of Christ. Our Church, our services of wor- 
ship, the schooling we receive, the correction and ad- 
monition for which we of riper years are so grateful 
to parents and teachers, these were the accumulation 
of the devotion to Christ of all His servants in the past. 

And though there is between each of us and Him 
something which no other man can know, how much 
that is of the deepest and best do you and I owe to 
the sympathy, correction, wisdom and example of our 
fellow-disciples. We still learn more of Christ from 
them, and we grow in faith and piety because those 
who love Christ defend us from the enemy and lead 
us to the green pastures and still waters. 



THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 59 

This let us gratefully acknowledge. There are 
two elements in the training our Lord gives us. How 
does the Good Shepherd care for His sheep? What 
did He for Peter? — He gave him much; He asked 
much of him. And He gives us all our fellow-Chris- 
tians can give, and He asks of us all we can give our 
fellowmen; even as He gives us all He can give, and 
asks of us all we can give in return. 

Dear friends, we see then the Constitution of the 
Church of Christ. The Lord was about to go away. 
His disciples would be left in the world; what should 
be done with them? There were others to be gathered 
and brought into fellowship with them. What forms 
of organization should He contrive, what agencies in- 
vent, to preserve, shape, animate and direct His 
Church ? 

Attend to our Lord's answer: Friend, disciple, 
What I am to thee, that be thou to Mine. Friends, 
disciples, in those who are Mine, find and know Me. 

Some have imagined He whispered a plan of the 
hierarchy to the Apostles between Easter and Ascen- 
cion day. I do not believe it. The forms of organi- 
zation, the outward constitution of the Church, waited 
upon occasion, were made as they were wanted. We 
see it in the appointment of the deacons, and in the 



60 SUMMER SERMONS 

Apostles' expectation of the near coming of the Lord. 
All forms of government of the Church may change; 
they have changed ; but the essential spirit of the Chris- 
tian community is unchangeable; they who taste the 
loving-kindness of the Good Shepherd go from Him to 
seek, to tend, to feed His flock. 



SEKMON VI. 

Neighbours, 

Luke 10: 36. Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was 
neighbour unto him who fell among thieves? 

[Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity.'] 



How often has this parable arrested us! It has 
spoken to us again and again as if our Lord stood near 
to answer our question. Whether we asked to know, 
or asked to excuse ourselves, it has held us to the ex- 
ample of the Good Samaritan. You know the story 
and its meaning well enough. 

But it needs to be repeated. For we become 
weary in well-doing. It is so discouraging to find that 
when we try to be good others leave the whole respon- 
sibility to us; the poor quickly learn whom to leave 
and whom to apply to; there are so many more calls 
upon us than we can either sift or answer ; and the law 
of love to our neighbour is so contrary to the maxims 
by observance of which our neighbours rise in the world, 
that we are tempted to frame to ourselves another rule 
of life and to try to persuade ourselves that Jesus did 



62 SUMMER SERMON 8 

not mean all He said. Therefore the lesson needs to 
be restated and re-enforced again and again. 

The first lesson is, that He who hath is neighbour 
to him who hath not; and he who hath not, to him who 
hath. I prefer to put it in that way, though I mean 
the same thing as we express by the responsibility of 
wealth; because it is not only the very rich who ought 
to care for the very poor; or the rich who ought to 
provide for the poor; but those who have enough 
ought to share it with those who have not. In older 
time, in a former arrangement of society, this was 
recognized. Men were arranged in ranks, as we say; 
and these ranks belonged to each other. A king be- 
longed to his people; a people to its king; and the 
nobles were the king's vassals as his subjects were 
theirs. The land was parceled out to the nobility and 
formed the only wealth; but it was not theirs simply 
to enjoy; for it they had to render services to the 
state, and they had a paternal duty to those who lived 
vjn it and made it valuable and them strong. All this 
has been disturbed since other sorts of wealth have 
increased, and land is bought with money, instead of 
being transferred as a trust as well as a possession. A 
rich man buys land now without coming into any direct 
moral relation to his tenants. This is an evil attend- 



NEIGHBOURS 63 



ant on the recognition that all men are equal. Those 
who hold themselves independent, in that very claim 
free others from all duty to them. The only law that 
holds among equals, is for each to get all he can and 
yield as little as he must. That is at present the rule 
in the world. 

At present the whole world is debating this ques- 
tion, trying to reach some adjustment of the rights of 
equal men. The issue of it will not depend on the 
principles at stake. It is interesting, but it will not 
be effectual, to decide how much belongs to capital or 
to the wealth already acquired, and how much may be 
claimed by labour, which enables capital to bear fruit. 
The issue will be decided by force. As labouring- 
men become more intelligent and learn the power of 
combination, with the inevitable progress of democ- 
racy in all governments, their claims will more and more 
be heard, and they will override all principles of finance 
and discount all possible revolutions; and against them 
capital will ply to the utmost its combinations, pro- 
tections, embargoes. I would point you to the fact 
that as this goes on, men are more and more losing 
sight of the unselfish, the moral, aspect of the question. 
Rich men become luxurious ; poor men, skeptical. It 
is the part of the Christian to keep alive in his own life, 



64 SUMMER SERMONS 

and by his example, teaching, and influence among 
others, the law of love; we are neighbours; we ought to 
love our neighbours as ourselves ; if we have and he 
has not, give; if we have not and he has, enjoy with 
him. A man does a great deal for society who is able 
to knit his fellows together, not in co-operation to 
secure equal rights, but in healthy relations of mutual 
interdependence; in the daily recognition of the differ- 
ence between us, a difference which makes us useful 
to each other, not rivals, but essential to each other's 
happiness. Servants and masters, high and low, rich 
and poor, learned and unlearned, those who think and 
those who labour with their hands, rulers and subjects, 
all these are essential to the fabric of earthly well- 
being, which is impossible where each lives for himself 
and tries to be like every one else. Each depends on 
the ordered working of every part. 

We cannot honour too highly those of our fellow- 
men who in our own age give themselves to service 
of their fellows; giving up all to it; living among the 
poor, and studying, projecting and trying all possible 
schemes for the amelioration of the lot of the miserable. 
Of this we might say much at another time. But here 
it is enough to remind you that you do much to the 
same end if you live not seeking your own but the 



NEIGHBOURS 65 



things of others ; not so eager for your own rights as 
for the rights of others ; careful to fulfil your own duty 
towards them; and more observant of their needs than 
of their just deserts. 

A poor man has a great deal which a rich man has 
not. The whole Bible is full of the doctrine that God 
is the God of the poor and needy; and if he belongs 
to a rich man at all, it is only inasmuch as that rich 
man recognizes that he is poor and naked, and not when 
he thinks he has need of nothing. Our Lord stands 
among the poor. A poor man is like the king's vassal 
in feudal times; he stands directly under the King. 
If poor then, in our application of this parable we 
should compare ourselves, rich in the grace of God, 
with the rich, who having much for which they must 
give account, stand under His law. They hardly shall 
enter the Kingdom of heaven. And in this light we 
are to recognize that he who hath is neighbour to him 
who hath not; and he who hath not is neighbour to him 
who hath. 

A second lesson of this parable is, He who lieth 
on thy way, is thy neighbour, and thou art his. The 
introduction of the Priest and the Levite was intended 
to contrast the coldness of official charity with the 
spontaneous fellowship of the Good Samaritan. They 



66 SUMMER SERMONS 

represented, the religious establishment; and no donbt 
we are to think of the excellent provision for the poor 
which God enjoined upon the Hebrews, which these 
men in their place may have administered honestly 
and well. But it is as if our Lord said, You have not 
satisfied the requirements of the Law, and of consci- 
ence, if you arrange and judiciously conduct schemes 
of public charity; whatever may be done in that way, 
you owe a duty to the misery of an unknown man, who, 
by chance, lies on your way. 

This cuts across the substitution of a merely offi- 
cial relief for private charity. It is the opinion of 
publicists that such public charities repress private 
effort in that line, and in so far are hurtful, for it is 
much better for the needy to feel the touch of a kind 
hand, than to be fed by a hireling; and it is more 
blessed to give than to receive. Dr. Chalmers, an 
authority on this subject, opposed the British poor-laws, 
and seeured a parish entirely exempt from their opera- 
tion, in which all relief depended on voluntary contri- 
bution and direct intercourse between givers and bene- 
ficiaries; and, it is said, with the best results. 

A second deduction is the rebuke of the fashion 
of charity which sometimes sets in; and, I believe, is 
said to have set in lately; which leads idle people, 



NEIGHBOURS 67 



negligent of their duties at home, to devote themselves 
to busy, useless and hurtful investigation of others' 
wants and relief of them. Your duty, our Lord would 
say, is to the person right on your way ; and it was the 
principle of the Apostle Paul, that it was a man's duty 
first to care for those of his own household. Let no 
nakedness nor hunger, no weary sickroom, no neglected 
child, cry out against us at the bar of God, while we run 
about to do good, as we say, with a silver cross dang- 
ling from our button; but let the home duties be done 
first, let those of our own blood bless our cheery voice, 
let our place and duty be fulfilled, let the man in our 
way be helped, before we go elsewhere. 

Someone might think this a strong argument 
against Foreign Missions. And it would be a valid 
argument against undertaking a mission abroad to the 
neglect of a mission at home. To me it is clear that 
the heathen around us, the unbelievers in our own 
homes, the erring youth of our city, and the ignorant 
among us and in our country, are our first care ; and it 
is simply ridiculous to preach to the Japanese if we 
neglect them; but to us, who are able to do but little, 
the chief value of Foreign Missions lies in their power 
to quicken our conscience as to our duty at home, to 
set us an example of devotion, to broaden our concep- 



68 SUMMER SERMONS 

tion of the purpose of the Gospel, and to set our brother 
at our gates in a true light by contrast with our brother 
far away. That it has this effect, those who give to 
Foreign Missions and pray for their success, will testi- 
fy; and I have not found those readiest to criticise 
them readiest to give and work for the heathen at home. 

A third lesson I may state thus: He that hath 
mercy is neighbour to him that needs; and he that needs 
to him that showeth mercy. What I want to say is, 
that the Lord exalts the charitable instincts of the 
Good Samaritan, the natural impulse of kindness, as 
the bond between him and the wounded man. What- 
ever their defence — preoccupation in official duty, or 
consideration of all possible dangers in delay — the 
priest and levite were steeled against troublesome pity. 
The other pitied too much to think. Our Lord liked 
that. If a man's heart is full of mercy, he recognizes 
a needy man as his neighbour without further inquiry ; 
and if a man really needs, he feels the kinship with the 
kind. 

Upon this, leaving many other things that might 
be said, I will make two remarks. It seems to me to 
say to men, Do what you feel you ought to, without 
waiting until others give their share. The moment 
you begin to weigh this, and to make your gift greater 



NEIGHBOURS 69 



or less or to hold it back, for fear you may give while 
others do not, something besides charity is moving you, 
and you are a little like the priest while imitating the 
Good Samaritan. Does such a course involve you? 
So he said to the inn-keeper, Whatever thou spendest 
more, when I come again, I will repay you; not, See 
if you cannot get it out of those who owe it as much as 
I do. 

I have spoken of the limitations of official charity. 
The same objection may be pleaded to societies for 
mutual benefit. In so far as they are societies for 
mutual benefit there can be no objection to them; for 
men who live from hand to mouth do well to arrange 
for succor in sickness and assistance at death. But 
they must not be thought thereby to fulfil the injunction 
to charity the Lord gives us in this parable. For they 
limit our charity to a certain brotherhood. They sub- 
stitute an artificial bond for the bond of neighbour- 
hood, they make us kinder to one man than we would be 
to another; kinder to a stranger of one sort than we 
might be to a stranger of another sort; and in so far 
contradict the natural sentiment of pity which the para- 
ble is intended to exalt. If you see a man in need, 
ask not who he is, or what his right. If your heart is 
full of pity, full of mercy, you will not. If you have 



10 SUMMER SERMONS 

the spirit of Christ, you will lose no time debating 
whether he is your neighbour or not. He that has 
mercy is neighbour to him that has need, and he that 
has need to him that showeth mercy. All the arti- 
ficial distinctions in the world could not keep two 
such apart. 

I trust no one hastily listening would think I 
mean we should give without consideration. There 
are cases when there is no time to hesitate ; it would be 
monstrous to pass by on the other side. And when we 
do stop to ask, it is not to find out who the needy man 
is, and whether it will be safe to have to do with him, 
but to ascertain his need, to make certain that we are 
not furthering imposture and idleness, at the expense 
of really needy persons who lie on our way. 

These suggestions may help you to meditate on 
the parable, and to think of the sweetness that would 
come into our life if men could be so simple and good 
as our Lord was and as here He teaches us to be. Alas, 
the many inventions of men, in government, trade and 
society, have brought in a thousand reasons to stop, con- 
sider, bargain, and withhold; yet, maybe, Christian 
simplicity could cut the knot by saying, He is my neigh- 
bour, and I am his. 



SEEMON VII. 

Other Men. 

Luke 18: 11. God, I thank Thee that I am not as other men are. 

[Eleventh Sunday after Trinity. ] 



In every place there must be a good many bad men 
and women. If yon only visit it and receive the court- 
esies of the dwellers there, you may think them polite, 
simple-hearted and virtuous. But when you get to 
know a few of them well, so that they are able to tell 
you all about the rest, you discover that there is a dark 
secret or at least an unpleasant story to be told about 
almost every family. Is there a successful merchant, 
very generous and therefore of influence, — or a family 
who are rich? Did you hear how they made their 
money? some one says, and then is poured out a good 
deal you would rather not remember. Of the store- 
keepers you hear unsavory stories, of meanness or dis- 
honesty in dealing, of unkindness to clerks, of hardship 
they have put upon work-women, of subterfuges to 
cheat the tax, so that henceforth you are on your guard 
against their smiles and wash their samples and re- 
weigh their packages and count the change they give. 



72 BUMMER SERMONS 

And there are worse stories, too, — scandal, blackening 
the reputation of families and rendering you uncom- 
fortable in some people's presence ever afterwards. 

There is some comfort (it is miserable comfort, 
indeed) in the fact that it is so everywhere and has 
been so always. I suppose that in a South African 
kraal there would be a crone able to tell you a great 
deal of evil of everybody in it, just as the newspapers 
find no trouble in filling columns of gossip about the rich 
people of New York, and the Prince of Wales. I have 
read such sad reports in letters written hundreds of 
years ago. And it is evident that it was so at Jeru- 
salem. The Pharisee in the Gospel, going up to the 
house of God, in a prayer that was little more than a 
soliloquy, gives his opinion of "the other men" of the 
city, when he says they were extortioners, unjust or 
adulterers. That is to say, that the men prominent in 
business and society there and then were spoken of just 
exactly as we know men prominent in business and 
society are spoken of now. 

It is interesting therefore to regard a man who 
was not like them. He was not like them; of that we 
can be certain. There were men who came up to the 
Temple to pray who were like whited sepulchres, decent 
outside, but within full of dead men's bones and all 



OTHER MEN 



uncle anness ; just as now men are prominent in churches 
and for a pretence make long prayers, who are extor- 
tioners, unjust and adulterers; but there are some not 
like them, and such was this Pharisee. He was a 
Pharisee, that is, a professedly religious man. He 
was correct in his life, and he was mindful of religious 
duty. This is so important that we may reflect on each 
particular of it. 

In these days it requires grace for a man so far 
to resist the thirst for gold, the pressure of life and the 
example of others, as to abstain from taking from others 
what belongs to them for his own profit. Of course 
that is stealing, but "the other men" do it; they do it 
when they make a "corner" in stocks or food; they do 
it when they sell an article pretending that it is other 
and better than it is; they do it when they give less 
than just service for a salary in public office; they do 
it when they oppress poor employees; they do it when 
they handle counterfeit money; they do it through a 
business which aims at others' injury; and if anybody 
does none of these things, nor things like these, it is 
because he restrains himself, or gives due honour and 
weight to the blessed instructions of his youth which 
restrain him. And so it was to the Pharisee's credit, 
that he was not an extortioner. 



74 SUMMER SERMONS 

So it is a difficult thing to be just. I esteem justice 
a rarity. To maintain my own opinions in perfect 
equity is a hard task, needing daily watchfulness and 
prayer. But there are just men. This Pharisee was 
just. 

And he could profess himself before God clean in 
his heart and home. There was no recollection from 
which his soul revolted ; no fault he dared not confess to 
his wife; no shame hidden from his children. He had 
reason to be thankful when he compared himself with 
other men. 

You will observe that he was satisfied with himself. 
He knew that he deserved the approval of his fellow- 
men. And he expected the applause of what we 
may call the Church. For he had been attentive to 
the duties of religion; he fasted twice every week; he 
gave a tenth of every thing he had. Certainly, this was 
an excellent man, a good citizen, a valuable man in the 
Church. 

I have intimated my belief that this could not have 
been the case unless the man had spent a careful youth 
and been rigid in his management of himself from the 
beginning. Of that former life I can only speculate; 
but I mean to tell you something about him that I 
certainly know. 



OTHER MEN 15 



One day he went up to the Temple to pray. He 
was mindful of the good habit of prayer, and careful 
to set the example of prayer in public. Many others 
were praying too; among others a certain fellow who 
did not stand well in the town, whose past had stains 
upon it. Another was there, of whom neither thought. 
What a curious thought it is, of Jesus Christ in the 
Temple, looking at the worshippers there, penetrating 
their hearts, seeing the connections of their thoughts, of 
which they were unconscious. He marked these two. 
He heard what the Pharisee said. He saw that our 
good man had somehow lost the sense that prayer is 
between a man and God. He was praying; but "he 
prayed thus with himself." He said, I thank Thee, — 
and truly he had great reason for thanksgiving in the 
comparison of himself with other men, — but his prayer 
drifted unconsciously into mere comparison of himself 
with others. I am not like others, he softly said. I 
don't cheat; I am not unjust; I am pure in my life; 
I'm not even like this publican whom if I were to walk 
home with today, everybody would say, What does Mr. 
Pharisee mean, walking with that publican ? No, more 
than that : I pay God back for all ; I neglect nothing ; — 
here I pray; twice every week I fast; I give ten per 
cent, to God of all I get, as father Jacob promised he 



76 SUMMER SERMONS 

would if God would bring him home safely and bless 
him in basket and store. 

I shall not deny that I have a great deal of sym- 
pathy with this man. He would be a good man to deal 
with, a safe associate, a useful parishioner; and at the 
risk of joining in his habit of comparison I will regret 
that "the other men" are not more like him. But we 
must mark what our Lord has made clear by flashing the 
clear light of His word through him for a moment. 
It is evident that he asked nothing of God. Evidently 
there was nothing he was conscious of the want of. 
He was complete according to his own plan just as he 
was. Unless honesty and decency deserve heaven, and 
he was assured of eternal life as a right, he does not seem 
to have cared for it. And as for the other men, and 
this publican, in the presence of God he thought of them 
only as a background for himself. As he wished for 
nothing, and asked for nothing, and does not seem to 
have admitted to himself that God has anything to give 
besides the smug satisfaction with himself he already 
enjoyed, he probably got nothing. He went down to 
his house, rubbing his hands, exactly such as he had 
come up ; unless perhaps the exercise had made any self- 
criticism or further progress even yet more unlikely 
than before. And though he did not know it, he went 



OTHER MEN 11 



down marked with the disapprobation of our Lord Jesus 
Christ. I can imagine him putting up the shop-shutters 
night after night, listening to the approval of his wife, 
rejoicing in the awe-stricken admiration of his neigh- 
bours, with one thought dancing in his heart the while, 
"I am not like other men, I'm not like other men." 
Then of course he died, having received his reward. 

It is not my purpose to compare him with the pub- 
lican. He did so himself, and Christ did so. It 
is the contrast between a man who has much to say for 
himself and one for whom nothing can be said; be- 
tween a man who had nothing to ask for, and one who 
dared not ask for anything; between a man justified in 
his own eyes and certain to have a glowing obituary 
notice, and another who when he looked at himself 
could only say, I am a sinner, I am the sinner, no one 
is so lost as I! 

On the other hand, I would take the Pharisee at 
his own valuation, with our Lord Jesus Christ looking 
at him. That is a wonderful thought, I say again, of 
the Lord looking right through a man's soul while 
he is praying, and knowing just what the man and his 
prayer are worth! And it is clear that our Lord dis- 
approved of him. Not because he was not an extor- 
tioner, unjust and adulterous; not because he fasted and 



18 SUMMER SERMONS 

gave a tithe of his possessions, certainly ; nor because it 
had cost him an effort to do this, and he thanked God 
for his success. Our Lord did not wish the Pharisee 
had all the stains on his conscience the publican had to 
be sorry for. The two men had to be judged by different 
standards. All that the Pharisee had to give thanks for, 
was good enough ; but what was it that he lacked ? 

It is the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ that re- 
veals it. The Pharisee had no sense of the real compass, 
the larger relations, of life. I have no doubt he, like 
the rest of his fraternity, loved the praise of men more 
than the praise of God. Life for him extended no 
further than he himself could see and hear. He was the 
center of all his thought and the great end of all his 
endeavour. It was a matter of no concern what the rest 
of men were. This poor publican was a matter of 
course. He was Noah, in an ark of his own righteous- 
ness, and the rest of mankind were going to perdition. 

Now observe the strong contrast between him 
and our Lord Jesus Christ. He is a representative 
of all men, — not in an abstract but a real way : He bore 
on His heart, on His conscience, the care, need, sin, of 
all men. That selfsufficient Pharisee, the sinful, appre- 
hensive publican, the disciple tempted to sell his Master, 
the rich man unable to give all to the poor, the governor 



OTHER MEN 79 



having in his hand the decision of life and death, but 
not courageous enough to choose the truth, — I choose 
examples well known, but may add — the voluptuaries, 
the skeptics, of all the earth, the savages hardly emer- 
ging from the condition of the brute, mankind, all man- 
kind, its hope, its hindrances, its abasement, its despair, 
all these were part of the consciousness of our Lord 
Jesus Christ — this was the life He knew and felt — and 
in view of it He adjusted His duty and His prayer. 
How different that was from the Pharisee's satisfac- 
tion in the completion of all that could be wished for — 
I'm not like other men, I'm not like other men ! 

I believe I might say that the publican was right 
not to think of any one but himself. What a false note, 
if he had said, Other men are like me! He had a 
great fact to encounter, a difficulty to adjust: God be 
merciful to me, the sinner. But the Pharisee, if his 
professions were correct, if he was so good, and the rest 
of men were not, it was not enough to roll the precious 
difference between his lips, and then go down to his 
house. There was a reason for prayer, for a resolution, 
for an act, as well as for giving of thanks. 

Think of those who walked the streets of Jerusalem 
with him! — Publicans, Herodians, earnest Apostles, 
young men in the very throes of the conflict between good 



80 SUMMER SERMONS 

and evil, extortioners, unjust, adulterers. What can we 
think of a church-member who is satisfied to be forgiven 
and assured of heaven, but cares nothing at all for others 
— for their present evil and their future damnation? 

In the second place, the Pharisee had not a sense 
of God, as God is. Has the question never struck you, 
when you knelt to pray, Where is my breath going to ? 
Into any Ear, or into the vacant air? Well, whom do 
you say your prayers to, to God as He is, or do you pray 
thus "with yourself" ? See Jesus Christ looking on. 
What does He say about God? How has He declared 
Him to us ? I might quote, God declares His Almighty 
power chiefly in showing mercy and pity. God does not 
stoop to our prayers merely to have us tell Him what 
good people we are, how finished, how infinitely better 
than any one else. O, I think God would be very sorry 
if there were nothing He could do for us. He sent His 
Son to tell us this. He sent His Son as a boon to each. 
If any man thinks God is pleased to be shown a balanced 
account, instead of having an opportunity to confer 
further favours, he makes a great mistake. Ash, He 
says : Ask and ye shall receive ; ask, seek, knock. How 
different, how disappointing, when a man can say, I 
have all you can do for me, and need your help no 
longer. The poor Pharisee did not know God. 



OTHER MEN 81 



And he had not a proper conception of himself. 
He has but a narrow conception of himself, who can 
think that the greatest and best man is as great and good 
as he may become. He has a false estimate, who is 
satisfied with all that can fill, and fill to bursting, this 
present life. And further, I conceive that the Pharisee 
had been dull or forgetful. If he was no extortioner, nor 
unjust, nor an adulterer, if he fasted and gave so 
carefully, he must at times have been conscious of 
temptations to do otherwise which it was not easy to 
overcome, of a nature just beneath the skin of his pro- 
priety which was just like the former lawlessness of this 
publican, of a self wild, haggard, and helpless forever, 
staring his decent self in the face. Either this, or he 
was no man. And then, when he said, I thank Thee, 
it would mean, Still have mercy, have mercy on me, 
the sinner; when he said, I'm not like other men, it 
would have meant, O, what a miracle of God's mercy 
it is that I am not ; and it would have been a cry, Let me 
not fall, Lord. When he thought of even that publican, 
with a throb of brotherly love he would have caught 
hold of the same grace, and given thanks based on his 
own redemption for the assurance of rn equal and com- 
mon salvation. 



BIRDS, 



SERMON VIII. 

Birds. 

Matt. 6: 26. Behold the fowls of the air. 
[Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity.'] 



"Holbein paints men gloriously," says Ruskin, 
"But never looks at birds." The things which authors 
and artists see, and the things they do not see, in the 
same landscapes, are curiously indicative of character. 
Mr. Gladstone has demonstrated that the Greeks in the 
time of Homer did not discern some shades of color at 
all ; and the author I have quoted, in his "Modern Paint- 
ers," makes very curious observations on the Greek pref- 
erence for flat scenery and the Middle Age preference 
for mountains, and on the reasons in the men themselves 
which led to this preference. In reading the Bible 
we should expect not only to find out what animals and 
plants were known in those times and places, but some 
indication of the character of a person from the animals 
he mentions and things he says about them. 

Here it is evident that our Lord looked at birds. 
Consider, He says, The fowls of the air. He looked at 



8h SUMMER SERMONS 

them, and He considered them, and He saw something 
in their life that was worth onr looking into. His 
recorded references to birds are not many: this one — 
Consider the fowls of the air; or, as St. Luke has it, 
the ravens. Perhaps, at that moment, a flock of crows 
rose from a cornfield before their eyes. Then He said 
at another time, Are not two sparrows sold for a far- 
thing ? That may have been said near a market. Again, 
He said once, The foxes have holes and the birds of 
air have nests, but the Son of man hath not where to lay 
His head. To mark the height to which a grain of 
mustard seed could grow He said that the fowls of 
the air could lodge in its branches. And in the awful 
prophecy of the catastrophe of the Jewish State, He 
said, Wheresoever the carcase is, there will the eagles be 
gathered together. 

It certainly is remarkable that all the birds our 
Lord is said to have noticed, belonged to tribes of scav- 
engers ; and it ought to dignify those useful birds a little 
in our eyes. You will observe that He does not remark 
upon the songs or plumage of the birds. In order to 
point a lesson about clothing, when He might very 
well have spoken of the beautiful plumage which so 
many are glad to have as an ornament of dress, He turns 
to the lilies of the field. The principal consideration in 



BIRDS 85 



every case is the provision made for the shelter and food 
of the birds — their living. Whatever else our Lord 
thought about when He considered the birds, the one 
particular He marked for us, is how they get their liv- 
ing. That is the Ornithology of the Gospel. 

We may argue back from this to our Lord's boy- 
hood. That is a very attractive subject. From His 
actual participation in all we have to go through we 
derive much comfort : it is the means by which we take 
hold of, and keep our hold upon, the vast disclosures of 
the Wisdom and Glory which He had with the Father 
before the world was ; and I think he only understands 
the Gospel who can find in it not only the declaration 
of the Father, but the traces of the human experiences 
of Jesus, the declaration of the Son. As when we read 
the Eighth Psalm, When I consider the heavens, the 
work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars which Thou 
hast ordained, we are reminded of David tending his 
flock on the hillside at Bethlehem through long nights, 
so our Lord's Consider the fowls of the air, makes us 
think of the wide-eyed Boy of Nazareth on the hills 
about His home regarding the birds ; noting their won- 
derful journeys to and fro, guided through the track- 
less air to regions of warmth and food; instinctively 
selecting the materials which they weave into nests be- 



86 SUMMER SERMONS 

yond the reach of enemies; fed in their helplessness; 
and in their guileless unconcern a very symbol of hap- 
piness. He considered this; and compared it with 
the sowing and reaping, the toil and anxiety, which 
He knew so well in the village and country roundabout, 
and doubtless felt in His home ; and with the gathering- 
into-barns, the greed, the selfishness, the parsimony, the 
hoarding, with which the village was just as familiar. 
Our text therefore becomes a photograph of that village 
life, — a photograph in hard lines, as it compares the 
sordid life of poor and well-to-do with the happiness 
of the birds. 

It is evident that the Boy's consideration of the 
birds led to several conclusions. The birds sowed not, 
reaped not, nor gathered into barns — God fed them: 
our Heavenly Father feeds the birds! Each bird is 
of value to Him. Even the sparrow, two for a farthing. 
Was it caught by the fowler, or killed by his well-direct- 
ed dart? It did not fall without our heavenly Father. 
These all live, move, and have their being, in His hand. 
Why, what a thought of God this is. The majestic flight 
of the buzzard, the swift passage of the swallow, the 
tired, bewildered pigeon resting on the kitchen roof, 
the twittering family in the nest, the poor little thing 
fluttering downwards with its broken wing, each — marks 



BIRDS 81 



a separate thought of God. 0, how full God's infinitude 
must be ! And then there were two other thoughts to 
which the Boy came. The first, How much better the 
service of God must be than the servitude of the world. 
Down in the village they were chaffering and quarrel- 
ing, planning and envying, hoarding or grumbling; the 
wheel hums, the loom groans, the farmer rises early and 
lies down late; the capitalist worries lest moth and rust 
should corrupt ; here on the mountain He sees the birds 
go and come, and lack nothing. If a man then were to 
follow the instinct of his conscience, were to heed the 
Voice that speaks to him, and were to go and do and 
be as the heavenly Father bids, will he lack? That is 
a profound philosophy of life. — And the second conclu- 
sion was this : Down on the plain the fields were divided 
and boys with sticks and shouts ran to drive the crows 
away; but it is from those grainfields God feeds the 
crows. Just as the law provided they should not be 
reaped too close, that the poor might glean in them ; and 
that the traveller might pluck and refresh himself as 
he went along. Then even the fields and men's accumu- 
lated wealth, and each man's foresight and labor are 
not all his own; God never cedes his right of eminent 
domain. Such were the considerations of this Boy, 
ripening to be the Saviour of the world. 



88 SUMMER SERMONS 

But we have not here the question of a Boy; it is 
the mature utterance of the Word. It is the mature 
utterance of One who stands in the serene conscious- 
ness that He is the Son of God, the Manifestation of 
Him, the Express Image of His Person. And none the 
less that He is the Son of Man, bearing in His conscious- 
ness the whole substance of the life of mankind, the 
Express Image of its real condition. And on this ac- 
count we must consider this thought of our Lord from 
two points of view. While assured of His measureless 
power when He chose to exert it, we still must admit the 
continual temptation and the necessity of self-sacrifice 
under which our Lord did His work in the world. If 
Thou art the Son of God, said the tempter, Command 
that this stone be made bread. While the birds have 
nests, He had not where to lay His head. But am I not 
much better than they ? Will He not much more feed 
Me ? This was the lesson of birds to Him ; and it made 
His temporary want, His homelessness and hunger while 
on the way of duty, to be evidently a part of the fruit- 
ful purpose of God. It was impossible that He, with- 
out Whom not even a sparrow can fall to the ground, 
should fail to hear Him always. 

And, on the other hand, it tells us of God's feel- 
ing of responsibility for His creatures. If His merciful 



BIRDS 89 



regard for all He has made were not as clearly seen by 
us as it was by Jesus, these words of our Lord would seal 
it. What He says about God is all we know about God ; 
the rest we only infer or surmise. Now He says God 
feeds the birds and minds the wandering sparrow; and 
having gone up on high to the dominion that is His, 
He feeds the birds and minds the sparrows; and this 
not because God likes birds more than anything else. 
Are we not of more value than many sparrows? And 
is He not your heavenly Father; your Father in a very 
different sense from that in which He is Creator ? The 
Spirit that still broods over the nests and over the grow- 
ing corn, does He not shelter your households, and mark 
your distant son, and quicken even our hearts unto life ? 
Was not that the meaning with which Jesus said, 
while He was with us, He feedeth them. Are ye not 
much better than they? Is not this the meaning with 
which He repeats these words, and gives His Sacra- 
ment ? 

And again, we must regard this not only as a 
record of the Lord's spiritual experience and of His 
mature conviction as a man, but as the explicit lesson 
He was sent to tell us. He came forth from God ; and 
the words written here, whose whole compass we have 
been trying to learn, God meant that He should say and 



90 SUMMER SERMONS 

explain to us, — in order that we may know Him, Whom 
to know aright is life eternal. 

It is not in vain that onr Lord presents Himself 
to us at once the Son of God and the Son of Man;- it 
is not in vain that He bids us watch the birds with 
Him and makes us see by means of them into the heart 
of God. If He stood in the world with the serene as- 
surance that God is His heavenly Father and that He 
is of more value than any of the little things God takes 
so much care of, and that therefore God's service is 
first and the worry about food and drink is not to be 
preferred to it — He wishes to put us in exactly the same 
position. As He became Son of Man, so would He 
make us children of God. Therefore He says in this 
place, Your heavenly Father, not My heavenly Father. 
We stand under the same loving care the birds enjoy. 
We are nearer to God than the birds are. God and we 
are Father and sons. We fulfil the wish and prayer of 
our dear Lord only when we do not let the devil move 
us from this, that we are the sons of God, and He hears 
us always, and that He numbers the hairs of our heads. 

Put yourselves into this position then, and open 
your ears to what God says to you. What did He say 
to Jesus while He lived in this sublime faith? And 
what to us? He says, Seek first the kingdom of God 






BIRDS 91 



and its righteousness, and all these things shall be added 
unto you. O, I wonder whether, when the first rugged 
winds blow, and the little birds feel within them a 
call to the rice-fields away from the hillsides where the 
cherries were and the fragrant clover, and the purple 
grape, is it hard for them to go 1 They do not lag upon 
the wing and turn back and embitter the new ripe grain 
with sullen regret. I know our Lord for the joy that 
was set before Him endured the Cross, despising the 
shame. So let us heed this Voice of our Father in 
heaven, and seek first the kingdom of God and its 
righteousness. Let us leave the beggarly elements of the 
world. Let us wake up from the thoughtlessness of 
childhood to the obedience of Christ. Let us put aside 
our own ways, our own thoughts, to say, Lo, I come, to 
do Thy will, O Lord. 



A GLIMPSE OF ST. PAUL'S HEART. 



SEKMON IX. 

A Glimpse of St, Paul's Heart. 

Rom. 9: 1-5 I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience 
also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost, that I have 
great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart. For I 
could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my 
brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh: Who are 
Israelites; to whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, 
and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the ser- 
vice of God, and the promises; whose are the fathers, 
and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is 
over all, God blessed for ever. 



The Ninth of Komans, although perplexing, is 
precious because it yields a glimpse of St. Paul's in- 
most heart. To some he appears cold, often enthusi- 
astic, but never affectionate. His zeal, his superiority 
to natural inclinations, his hunger for labours, his 
almost delight in peril, remove him a little from the 
range of our sympathy ; so that we think of him as a man 
of his own kind, like a great genius in art or literature, 
whose idiosyncrasies may be interesting while it were 
folly to copy them. But here, after a brilliant argu- 
ment and all aglow with the certainty of the peace and 
glory which await the persecuted saints of God, a 
sudden recollection of those he loves so dearly who are 



H SUMMER SERMONS 

yet out of Christ stings him, like a pang at the heart 
which stops the breath, and he says, I could wish that 
I were accursed from Christ for my brethren, for my 
kinsmen according to the flesh. 

Therefore St. Paul was not a hard man. The mis- 
sionary who could wander all day through a strange 
city, without joining the gay groups in the forum or 
the baths or sitting down in the bazaars, who thought 
it better not to marry, and spoke with a seeming bitter- 
ness of those who entangled themselves with the affairs 
of this life, who broke from pleasant companionship 
to take a new journey, and had so little tolerance for 
the compromises of halfhearted Christians, this stern, 
lonely, sober, unresting man, was not insensible to the 
delights of home and the ties of love; it was only that 
the love of Christ constrained him. Whatever sweet 
thoughts lured him to rest and were drowned by the Woe 
is me if I preach not the Gospel; and if while travelling, 
where no duty could interrupt the spell, his heart weak- 
ened at the recollection of an alienated home, — if the 
mother who had taught him the Bible but now grieved 
over him as an apostate, and the father who had made 
such sacrifices to make him a rabbi, but now cursed him 
as ungrateful and a blasphemer against God for turning 
the dearbought schooling against the ancestral faith, 



ST. PAUL'S HEART 95 

and the great teacher who had loved to develop the keen 
logical faculty and the wide fearless mind, expecting 
to depend on them in aftertime, but now sat grieving 
like Jacob over Joseph, and the sister at whose house 
he had probably dwelt at Jerusalem, who still loved 
him though she dreaded his principles and daily an- 
ticipated tidings of his execution, sometimes almost 
broke his heart, he beat down the thought and brought 
it into subjection lest he should be a castaway. Per- 
haps this was the thorn in the flesh. In this chapter 
we find the impress of such a struggle. 

/ say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience 
also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost, that I have 
great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart. For 
I could wish to be accursed from Christ for my breth- 
ren, my kinsmen according to the flesh. These kins- 
men were the proper heirs of God's promises. Not 
only did they still cherish the notion that God had a 
particular regard for them, but they were justified in 
it. Yet they were God's enemies. They neither knew, 
nor would know Him. The glories of which Paul has 
been writing, the hope that can more than sustain us 
under the troubles of this life, they have no chance of 
getting. As he went everywhere giving this hope to 
multitudes who had never dreamed of it, to many in- 



96 SUMMER SERMONS 

deed who had been strangers to every lofty principle, 
every worthy wish, he could not for a moment rid him- 
self of the thought of those dear countrymen and kins- 
men, who seemed to be shut out from the Gospel alto- 
gether. His arguments, prayers, entreaties had been 
fruitless. Would to God he could be accursed from 
Christ, if that would save them. He would suffer for- 
ever, if thereby they might get Heaven. 

That were a dreadful thing for one of us to say. 
That is a depth of self-abnegation we have never reached. 
It is more like Christ than any words I know. It is 
not mere human affection — he would not be accursed 
in order to share with them; it is Divine — he would 
bear the curse alone to save them. So Christ trode 
the winepress alone. 

St. Paul more than any man knew what the love 
of Christ is. The words almost fail him and are 
drowned with tears when in the first part of his letter 
to Timothy he tries to tell what Christ had done for 
him; it is he who speaks of the love of Christ which 
passeth knowledge, and urges to self-devotion and 
mutual forgiveness by Him Who loved us and gave 
Himself for us. To us heaven is a dream, Christ is 
an opinion, His gifts are seldom recognized, and the 
service we render Him we are ashamed to own. To 



ST. PAUL'S HEART 97 

Paul Christ was Christ; to live was Christ; to die was 
gain. He was shot through and through with that sub- 
lime affection between God and us which He had made 
possible by coming down to dwell here, as the clouds at 
sunset are saturated with light, though when the Sun 
goes down they are gray and cold. His consolation, 
strength, assurance were derived from Christ in Him. 
Yet he was willing to be accursed from Christ for his 
brethren, his kinsmen according to the flesh. 

St. Paul more than any man knew what it is to 
be accursed from Christ. What is perdition? What 
is that sunless waste, that void without warmth, that 
hopeless loneliness, that quenchless fire, that abandoned 
godlessness, which lies beneath life and is revealed to 
us here and there and haunts us in the world like the 
inarticulate recollection of a bad dream? Think of 
the world before Christ came. How aimless was its 
progress, how foul its culture, how hostile and unhinged 
and centreless its parts. Blot from your minds all 
that Christ is to you, all that has come to you from 
Him and the Church, however little ; rather turn these 
against you. Let your heart be fortified and your eyes 
strengthened that like St. Paul, daily instructed by 
special revelation, you may get some notion of the horror 
of loss which God had to suffer to remedy. Remember 



98 SUMMER SERMONS 

Jesus in Gethsemane. Then may you guess what it 
is to be accursed from Christ. Yet Paul could wish 
to be accursed from Christ for his brethren, his kins- 
men according to the flesh. 

We learn now what a Christian may become if 
he really lives in communion with Christ. We call some 
virtues impossible, some doctrines ideal and imprac- 
ticable. Our Lord is as much scoffed at now as by 
the Sadducees. Yet here is a man who seems to have 
realized some measure of likeness to Him. His kins- 
men are his enemies. There is no hatred like that of 
the Jews of ancient time against those who had for- 
saken the faith ; and Paul was not only a Christian, but 
the leader of those who strove most heartily to break 
down all distinction between Jews and Gentiles. Ee- 
ligionists always care more for forms than for princi- 
ples. Paul condemned circumcision and the festivals 
and distinction of meats. Yet he had once been more 
rigorous and implacable than they. They hated, de- 
tested him as a renegade, a traitor, a viper, a parricide. 
They got up tumults against him, they stoned him, they 
hired assassins. Yet he had great heaviness and con- 
tinual sorrow in his heart and could wish to be accurs- 
ed from Christ for them. 

Again we learn the secret of his zeal and of his 



ST. PAUL'S HEART 99 

success. It was not merely his profound convictions, 
though Scripture and history and nature and the hu- 
man soul all had but one voice to him ; nor his immense 
shamefast gratitude for the inexplicable grace of God 
to him; nor the oppression of duty only, which would 
not have let him rest ; but it was love for them ; a love 
greater than a mother's ; a love learned of God ; a love 
more like Christ's than I have read of elsewhere, — 
a willingness to be accursed from Christ for their sal- 
vation. 

It is also well to know how sore his heart was all 
the time he was engaged in his great work. Some of 
us think that great sorrows or disappointments unfit 
us for sacred employments and excuse from obligation 
to God. How can we preach or work, we say, when we 
have this agony of our own ? But Paul obeyed in spite 
of ever-present sorrow, which success only made more 
poignant, — a sorrow he could never hope to heal. 

But I wish to show you another secret of St. Paul's 
inner life : not only was his heart bleeding all the time 
for his relatives and countrymen who had fallen quite 
out of the scheme of God's mercy, as shifting tides have 
turned a seaport to an inland town, to decay forgotten 
while commerce steams on other ways; but the fact 
worried and in some degree perplexed him. St. Paul 

Lore. 



1 00 SUMMER SERMONS 

could not understand why God (who could sway the 
hearts of men) had utterly rejected the Jewish nation 
to offer the Gospel to the Gentiles. To him they were 
not merely rebellious, but Godforsaken; and if I am 
not mistaken these chapters show how he had often 
wrestled with the questions, Why had He forsaken them, 
Why He had let the coming of the Messiah 
end in national disappointment, — Why were so 
many, so favourably placed, with every light 
of moral culture and special revelation, yet in- 
corrigibly blind or obstinate : a question which, in a 
slightly different shape, perplexes us. — We wonder why 
so many men are not Christians. Remembering on 
how little the decision hung which gave us to Christ, 
we wonder why God did not give to the offer of the 
Gospel and the arguments of its preachers just the slight 
additional momentum which would have enabled it 
to overcome the resistance of others. I attempt no ex- 
planation of a fact to which St. Paul could answer only 
that God's judgments are unsearchable and His ways 
past finding out. We can see, however, that such an 
unsatisfied doubt, if you please, is compatible with 
Christian obedience, and, secondly, how Paul went about 
meeting it. 

If you read this chapter, which undoubtedly be- 



ST. PA UUS HE A RT 101 

trays his wrestling with the question which was con- 
tinually suggested by all that was kindly in him, you 
will see that he sought an answer in the Holy Scrip- 
tures. There is an appeal to Sacred History, to Pro- 
phecy, and to doctrine. A nearer study shows that some 
of his quotations are made from memory, others by put- 
ting together texts that are far apart. I can imagine 
the Apostle pacing the desk of a vessel on the Mediter- 
ranean at night, or while men slept going beyond the 
walls of a city, or seeking the beach, and there calling 
up text after text and incident after incident that might 
perhaps satisfy both faith and affection ; and laying one 
text beside another ; until when he wrote to the Romans 
nothing was more natural than to sketch in bold outline 
the reasoning wherewith he sought to calm himself. 

So we may learn to turn to Holy Scripture for 
the solution of difficulties, for life is full of them. 

But Paul always had some well-defined princi- 
ples behind his arguments, and to these he compelled 
even his logic to conform. If his texts and deductions 
seemed to make against them, he would cry, God forbid, 
and interpose an explanation. This chapter shows also 
some of these principles. The first is God's Sovereignty. 
All things are in His hands; all are His creation; all 
express His thought; none can overturn His purpose. 



102 SUMMER SERMONS 

He does what He will. On whom He will He has 
mercy; whom He will He hates; nor can any one de- 
mand a reason. One thing He forms for honour, 
another for dishonour, as a potter moulds his clay, as 
in building a house you put one piece of stone under- 
ground, and the other after it is hewn and carven above. 
The second principle is God's Justice. If any inference 
seems to contravene His perfect Justice, it is met by a 
God forbid. Nor let it be supposed that God's Justice 
is merely rigour in judgment and in punishment. It 
is that quality by virtue of which the Lord of all the 
earth does right; a Eight that will satisfy all our con- 
victions and square with eternal Wisdom. A third prin- 
ciple is the Unity of all God's Operation. The pur- 
pose that He had in the time of the Patriarchs, the pur- 
pose served by Moses, the purpose indicated by Isaiah, 
and that which Paul served, which created this sad 
difference and the disappointment of affection, is the 
same. If we can understand what God meant then, 
we shall know what He intends now; and if present 
events seem to contradict His former will, we may ex- 
pect a future which shall reunite and explicate the con- 
tradiction. 

Comparing all parts of Scripture by these lights, 
St. Paul gets an answer for his heart. Mind, it is not 



ST. PA UUS HEART 1 08 

a clear answer. He does not understand why his kins- 
men are not partakers of the Gospel. The great heavi- 
ness and continual sorrow of heart and the wish to be 
accursed for their sake do not cease, and yet he learns 
to cast all his care upon the Almighty, Just and In- 
fallible God. 

Dear friends, it is enough if you discern the beat- 
ing heart of the great Apostle and see how he carries 
such pain of love and unsatisfied question in spite of the 
higher peace. Hence you may learn how simple was the 
faith on which the Church was built and may be en- 
couraged to attempt duty without waiting for the per- 
fect light. Like Paul let us cultivate so mighty a love, 
like him let us be content even if we carry in us so deep 
a trouble until it shall be satisfied in heaven. Only, 
like him, let us be diligent in spite of it. 



SOME PRINCIPLES OF OUR LORD'S THINKING. 



SEKMOIST X. 

Some Principles of Our Lord's Thinking. 

Matt. 18: 35. So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also 
unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his 
brother their trespasses. 

[Twenty-second Sunday after Trinity.'] 



The plain lesson of this parable is the duty and 
necessity of mutual forgiveness. Forgive as we forgive 
is shown to he not only a prayer, but also a law; our 
rigour against others shuts the gate of Heaven against 
ourselves; and goodness to them becomes a pledge of 
God's mercy to us on the day of Judgment. Leaving 
this lesson, I prefer to direct your attention to certain 
thoughts which lie beneath the parable. We may find 
here some of the principles of the Lord's thought, His 
'philosophy of life — so to speak — which shall yield 
inexhaustible practical instruction. 

The first of these principles is, that we may argue 
from our own Moral Sense to the nature and judgments 
of God. Pray, get the idea clearly before you: Our 
conscience tells us authoritatively, trustworthily, about 
God. 



106 SUMMER SERMONS 

All of us may have thought so. Yet have not 
many sometimes wondered whether God is such a Being 
as the Church teaches Him to be ; and have not others 
challenged us to prove that He is merciful and visits 
us ? A large body in the present day urge that you can 
find out nothing concerning the Most High. They de- 
clare that there is no proof that He is a Person, and 
laugh without check at our talk about Him, saying 
that we apply to Him human feeling, measure Him by 
human conscience, and in short make Him but a deified 
man, a projection of ourselves; while they, if they ad- 
mit His existence at all, speak simply of a Power-not- 
ourselves-which-makes-for-righteousness. 

This parable shows what our Lord Jesus Christ 
would reply to such attack, and for us that is the final 
argument. I do indeed believe that God is beyond our 
knowledge, and no representation we can form of Him 
can be like He is. If we call Him a Person, it is to 
reject an error which would make Him nothing but 
a tendency ; if we say He is Triune, it is that we may 
gather and hold incomprehensible Truth we have heard 
of Him; if we speak of His heart and of the mind of 
the Lord, it is to keep the symbol of a great fact, too 
great for our understanding; and if we say that our 
conscience tells us of His will and ways, we do not 



OUR LORD'S PHILOSOPHY 101 

mean that our conscience grasps and defines Him, but 
only that it is true so far as it goes ; it is but a scintilla 
of His light ; He is Infinite ; He is more and greater and 
purer than all that we are told and all that we can learn 
about Him ; in this sense He is now unknowable, though 
in that other He has been revealed. 

Now let us attend to this story. Our Lord came 
forth from the bosom of the Father to declare Him to 
us. I am often tempted to call His plain teachings a 
homely truth. He says not much of the awfulness, but 
more of the Fatherliness of God. He does not relate 
dim visions, the light and thunders and seraphim of 
the Hebrew prophets, who were awestricken, but He 
speaks like a son, of a Father. He speaks, too, as if 
He could not conceive of a contradiction. Here He 
tells a story to the Twelve — of a very kind king; of a 
forgiven servant who cruelly exacted from another an 
insignificant debt though he had just been forgiven an 
immense one. He awakened in them shame and indig- 
nation. There is not a healthy human conscience but 
would argue that the servant was wicked and deserved 
great punishment, and must inevitably forfeit the mercy 
of his master if it come to the latter's ears. While His 
disciples' faces were flushed with indignation under 
the vivid tale, He turned it to a revelation of God: 



108 SUMMER SERMONS 

Thus also will my heavenly Father do unto you! He 
argued from the natural, universal, invariable, irrevoc- 
able moral conviction of all humankind to the nature 
and the will of God — Thus also will my heavenly 
Father do to you ! 

This was but one instance of our Lord's habit. 
He often does the same. The shepherd seeking the 
lost sheep; the Father watching for the wandering son 
and running to meet him while he is yet afar off; 
the question, If your children ask bread will ye give 
them a stone — and how much more shall your heavenly 
Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him; in 
fact, the whole revelation of God He brought, in 
which the relation of Father and Son was essential and 
to which the Lord's Prayer answers; these establish 
a conception of God which answers to every noble 
and true feeling of the human heart, to every funda- 
mental conception of the human mind, to every in- 
vincible intuition of human conscience; He is not 
a deified man, but the Image in which we were 
created; we have in ourselves the proof of His Being 
and the pledge of His relationship; we move in 
the sphere in which He is ; we deal with the same things ; 
we have the same principles of action; we may rely 
upon His sympathy; and we may walk with Him. 



OUR LORD'S PHILOSOPHY 109 

That, I think, is the declaration of our Lord Jesus 
Christ. 

From this will follow two important inferences. 
First, In God will be found the perfection and har- 
mony of all the truths of our nature. Our goodness, our 
mutual love, our leniency, our zeal, our worship, each 
is imperfect, for it may daily improve; and sometimes 
there seems to be a contradiction between one natural 
feeling and another. If all these point to God, in God 
their real truth will be disclosed and their harmony will 
be found. I believe that every relation into which we 
are put by God either reflects a spiritual reality or is 
by Him intended to produce some part of His Image 
in us; and therefore that in God will be found the ex- 
planation of every hunger and thirst. 

A second inference is, that the voice of conscience 
has the sanction of God. Of course we are bound to 
purify it, to free it from those prejudices which custom 
or selfishness may impose, to widen and deepen and in- 
form it by the Word of God; but whenever we reach 
those bases of morals which are in every soul, then have 
we the Jachin and Boaz, the Strength and Beauty, 
which are the pillars before the Unseen Temple — the 
Lord God Almighty and the Lamb. 

Therefore, I would say, Whoever is so miserable 



110 SUMMER SERMONS 

that lie awakens human pity, may be much more sure 
of the Divine pity. Whoever relies on human sym- 
pathy, may know that there is a more effectual Fellow- 
feeling. If any one, notwithstanding ingratitude and 
vice, has not forfeited our affection nor slain our hope 
for him, we may be sure that he has not exhausted that 
greater Love nor broken from that effectual Purpose. 
And if there be much in the world to vex our sense of 
Justice and to try our faith, we may be assured there 
is reason for it in that Higher Righteousness, and a 
solution in God Himself. 

The second great principle of thought I find indi- 
cated in this parable is, that God is the pattern for us, 
whatever and whoever we may be. This follows from 
the former. If He is the perfection of the morals which 
witness in us, to be like Him is the aim and law of life. 
This follows also from the parable. The wicked servant 
ought to have done like his good Master — the good 
Master was a figure of the heavenly Father — the wicked 
servant represented us — therefore we ought to be like 
the heavenly Father. As the devout poet has it, 

"All fathers learn their craft from Thee; 
All loves are shadows cast 

From the beautiful, eternal hills 
Of Thine unbeginning past." 



OUR LORD'S PHILOSOPHY 111 

It is a beautiful and not untrue opinion that all 
earthly natural relationships are but symbols of spirit- 
ual relationships, insomuch that some have held our 
natural birth to be not so real as and only symbolical 
of the new birth in Holy Baptism. Certainly Father- 
hood is another thing among men than it is among 
brutes; and Luther in the Larger Catechism represents 
God putting the Fourth Commandment on fathers and 
mothers like the gold chain around the neck of an 
official, to mark them as His deputies and representa- 
tives. Certainly, by His insistence on that name 
Father, and by His reasoning from our love to children 
to God's love for us, our Lord clearly teaches what a 
father ought to be. 

What a rebuke is this to harshness! To any 
neglect to provide for the home! To any such selfish 
love, as satisfies only earthly wants and gives abundant 
opportunity, but feels no responsibility for the child! 
To any weak indulgence, which tolerates wrongdoing 
and spares itself the pain of severity, and rather lets 
the child become a ruin than bear a temporary alien- 
ation! The Bible, by the story of God's dealing with 
our race, shows exactly what a father ought to be. 
What patience during helpless years ! What unbroken 
love, including needed punishment, far seeing discipline, 



112 SUMMER SERMONS 

prompt forgiveness, careful education and opportune 
supply of every want ! Is it too much to say that every 
father ought to try to be like God and in difficult cases 
ought to study His example ? What man is fit to have 
children, who does not do this ? And what consolation, 
what hope, what strength, what light and peace even 
when they go astray, will those find who do this % 

But not only will fathers find in Him their pro- 
totype. He is the pattern and end of all men. We 
were created in His Image. We are being renewed in 
His Image. We shall be like Him. We have this 
hope. Let us consider it a moment. 

It seems difficult. All of us have lower ideals. 
We try to be like some one else we know or to unite the 
excellence of many. How many of our youth choose 
a different pattern. They do not think of God except 
to be afraid of Him. They dread good men. It does 
not enter their heads to imitate that soberness their 
fathers have been driven to by sad experience. They 
prefer to be like those whom a few boastful companions 
admire, to astonish the simple and to be applauded by 
the bad. They take as their ideal some jovial fellow, 
who tastes every vice, reviles decency and laughs at what 
is good. They work, to spend aimlessly. They affect 
an expense they cannot bear. They cheaply imitate 



OUR LORD'S PHILOSOPHY 113 

the splendid spendthrift. Their leisure is given to 
the billiard-room and the club. In losing grandly, in 
saying and listening to what would outrage home, in the 
wantonness of their companions, in coming as near as 
possible to the edge of ruin and fearfully draining a 
cup which poisons as often as it exhilarates, they think 
they are most manly. They know — or do they know ? — 
that it is the way of hell. They see — or do they see ? — 
that the tottering step, the branded body, the ruined 
name, the gladly-forgotten grave and the burning mem- 
ory of some who were a little older, were won in this 
way. They think there is something admirable in this 
race with the furies. For this they stake their parents' 
name, their own happiness, their future on earth, the 
peace of all who know them, the love of God, and their 
eternal welfare ! This is but a weak picture of the ideal 
of some who may hear me today. 

And now I cry to you, as those who have seen the 
glory and heard the voice of God, Be ye perfect, Be ye 
perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect. Let Truth, 
Right, Purity, Love, which He always regards, be your 
only principles. Like Him, devote yourselves to others. 
Like Him, hate evil. Like Him, let your love for bad 
men be joined with a desire to make them good. Like 
Him, have no fellowship with Belial. Like Him, find 



1U SUMMER SERMONS 

no excuse for sin. Like Him, have a fervent hope, a 
belief in all that is good. Live in the true and pure im- 
pulses of your soul. Be turned aside by no disappoint- 
ment ; be not discouraged by any ingratitude. Be true. 
Be pure. Be good. Be perfect. It is a choice between 
absolute selfishness, the imitation of those whom no- 
body trusts, all are ashamed of, and who are soon buried 
out of sight, and likeness to God. 

This ideal any young man can hold if he will. He 
will be helped and guided by the Word of God. He may 
rely upon God's sympathy in his endeavours, and 
forgiveness of his faults. To this we are called by 
conscience as well as by the Bible. Ko other view of 
life has one grain of authority. 



SERMON XL 

Daily Thanksgiving. 

Luke 17: 17, 18. And Jesus answering said, Were there not ten 
cleansed? But where are the nine? There are not found 
that returned to give glory to God, save this stranger. 

[Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity. ,] 



This is the story of an actual occurrence. It is 
a part of the history of our Lord. Probably it is one 
instance of many. Not once only did men cry to Him 
for aid, and having got it go away unmindful of Him. 
If every one He benefited had become His disciple, 
there would have been many more to stand with Him 
at the end. It serves also as a symbol of men's ingrati- 
tude at the present time. In the midst of danger they 
call upon God; but, having been delivered, they forget 
that God had any part in the deliverance, and are al- 
most ashamed to say they prayed. 

It has been written to show us that our Lord did 
not like to be treated with such ingratitude. It pleased 
Him that one came back to thank Him. He noted 
also that this was the one of whom least could have been 
expected. The Holy Ghost marked this incident to 



116 SUMMER SERMONS 

be a reminder to us. Do not omit to thank God for the 
good He does you, it says: Do not think He does 
not care; thanksgiving belongs to prayer, as certainly 
as God's promise to hear and answer does. 

We will grant at the outset that our Gospel is an 
admonition to thanksgiving; significant when it comes 
to us in the midst of disaster; and especially after a 
great deliverance; and it would be perfectly in place 
to show you here how much reason for thanksgiving 
we have, and to analyze the thankfulness you ought to 
show. But, having suggested these topics, on which you 
may supply comment for yourselves, let me ask you to 
think for a little while of two thoughts especially sug- 
gested by our text. 

You will observe that there were ten men in like 
misery, making the same prayer, and getting the same 
blessing ; and after it nearly all of them, nine out of the 
ten, went together without a word of acknowledgment. 
We may suppose that if there had been but one leper, it 
would have been different. If one had lain sick among 
the healthy, or one leper had rued his loneliness apart 
from the rest, and having cried to Jesus had been healed, 
he would have realized how great a kindness had been 
done him, and that he owed it all to the Lord. Then 
he would have thanked Him, and he would have thought 



DAILY THANKSGIVING 117 

it monstrous not to have done so. It was because each 
of them had enjoyed a benefit which many others had 
got too ; it was because his healing was not singular, but 
just like other men's, that it did not seem to bring with 
it so great an obligation ; as if each could say to himself 
as he trudged away (especially if the example of the 
Samaritan awakened a little question in him), I don't 
see that I have any special obligation to this Wonder- 
worker : He gave to me only what He gives to anybody 
else. 

So, I conceive, it is not uncommon for men to think 
that what they enjoy with others, and especially the 
ordinary and daily gifts of God's Providence, are no 
reason for thanksgiving. He lets His rain fall on the 
just and on the unjust. Nay, more : the ordinary gifts 
of God's Providence,— the succession of the seasons, 
the fruits of the field, the advantages of ordered society, 
the opportunities of education, He does not give by con- 
stant and repeated interposition ; He has given to things 
their natures, and imposed upon them the laws of their 
operation ; and not out of kindness, but because of their 
regular interworking, do they make our life what it is. 
We enjoy what others enjoy. It is given without regard 
to our good- or ill-deserts, and with no purpose of show- 
ing special interest in us. If we were not drowned in the 



118 SUMMER SERMONS 

storm, it was because the tide stopped before it came to 
us. If our house was not overturned, it was because the 
wind shifted. If, on the other hand, while everybody 
else has been hurt, one of us, in equal peril, had been 
wrapped round and round in a miraculous protection ; if 
the waves had rolled back from our house, while they 
dashed against others that stood less exposed; then we 
might have reason to give thanks ; but it is only a form 
to do so, when we share a common deliverance or ordi- 
nary benefit of all. 

This, I think, is the unconscious argument of a 
great many. I am not afraid to say that when a day 
of national thanksgiving is appointed, to give thanks for 
the food of body and mind He has given through the 
year, or when we keep a thanksgiving after deliverance 
from a great calamity, it is for most people merely a 
matter of form. In many cases there is practically total 
unbelief. We shift the whole thing upon what are called 
the Laws of Nature. We do not believe that our 
heavenly Father does it all; we doubt whether He 
could exempt us from the operation of these laws; 
practically, we do not admit that there is a heavenly 
Father at all. 

"Have you said the Creed today?" Melanchthon 
suddenly asks in the midst of a lecture on this Gospel 



DAILY THANKSGIVING 119 

delivered to his students at the University. Luther 
put the Creed as a part of every morning and evening 
prayer ; as in our Suffrages : a place it had in the older 
prayers of the Church. It is well to accustom our- 
selves to say night and morning, "I believe that God has 
created me and all that exists; that He has given and 
still preserves to me my body and soul with all my 
limbs and senses, my reason and all the faculties of 
my mind, together with my raiment, food, home and 
family, and all my property; that He daily provides 
me abundantly with all the necessaries of life, protects 
me from all danger, and preserves me and guards me 
against all evil ; all which He does out of pure, paternal, 
and divine goodness and mercy, without any merit 
or worthiness in me ; for all which I am in duty bound 
to thank, praise, serve, and obey Him." 

After that, a man can more heartily say, "I thank 
Thee that Thou hast protected us through the night," 
"That Thou hast this day so graciously protected us." 
The repetition of the Creed may not only fix the truth 
in your conscience, but as you pray it before God, it 
may help you to examine yourself as to the reality of 
your belief. And therefore I ask you with Melanchthon, 
Did you say the Creed today? And if not, why did 
you not? 



120 SUMMER SERMONS 

Our Gospel reminds us in reference to this, firstly, 
that it is a Person to Whom we owe all we enjoy — a 
Person, Who loved us enough to give us His Son to 
declare Him to us, — and One Who not only gives good 
gifts to many at one time, but considers the different 
ways in which they take them. If many millions are 
fed as you are, is it any less a kindness to feed you? 
If God has so wisely ordered the governance of this 
world that all His creatures serve the use of all, is that 
a less or greater kindness? I have read that a great 
man in his boyhood, in a night when all the sky was 
filled with meteors and the people were crying out that 
the end of the world had come, came out, and calmly 
looked at "the pointers" in Charles's Wain pointing 
to the North Star, and said, that all was safe: they 
kept their place. Is it not an additional reason for 
thanksgiving that God has written His steadfast love 
in all the arrangements of life, so that we can lie down 
to sleep assured that the stars stand sentinel, that the 
tides cannot transgress His thus far and no further, that 
the winds obey Him, that the hairs of our heads are 
numbered? Secondly, our Gospel reminds us that He 
Who has ordered all things can be touched by our thank- 
fulness or ingratitude. Jesus was pleased by the return 
of the Samaritan. He said, But where are the nine? 



DAILY THANKSGIVING 121 

Though God gives to so many, He marks the behaviour 
of each ; and though He does not quickly cease to supply 
their wants, He is hurt when men take with no thought 
of the Giver. In the expressive Latin, an ungrateful 
man is an ingrate. 

There is another wrong thought which a great 
many indulge: viz., That some persons have no right 
to expect as much of God as some others. To some 
it seems a dreadful thing if they meet with injury or 
loss; not a calamity only, but a wrong done them by 
God; and they seek to revenge themselves by talking 
ill of Him. Even though after the worst is borne they 
are far better off than the vast majority of men, 
they complain. They do not think God ought to give 
to all what they wish for ; that He ought to bless black 
men and Chinese and even poor white people with what 
they think necessary for themselves ; yet complain as if 
they were terribly misused if they are not quite as well 
off as some others they know. This thought may have 
been in the hearts of the nine. Having been healed, it 
may have seemed proper enough to them for the Samari- 
tan to turn back to give thanks while they hurried on. 
They even began to think how fortunate the miserable 
Samaritan had been to have been admitted to the 
society of nine leprous Jews, so as to share the common 



122 SUMMER SERMONS 

benefit that had befallen them. What right had he to 
expect anything ? What right, to show himself to the 
priest? They alone were the ones who could have 
laid a claim to the mercy of God. 

This appears to me the commonest of sins. We 
think ourselves better and with more claim on God 
than other people. We conclude that the men on whom 
the tower in Siloam fell were sinners more than other 
men. The miserable drowned at sea, the bleaching 
bodies no one seeks, why should not these die? The 
myriads of victims of an Indian or Chinese famine, 
why should they have been delivered? But if the 
respectable people of our own acquaintance were hurt, 
if men of name and note were lost, if you or I were 
injured in person or property never so little, — what an 
unparalleled calamity ! 

Melanchthon says gratitude is made up of truth 
and justice; and certainly such a thought as I have 
described is neither true nor just. If we compare our- 
selves not with the few who have much more than they 
can use, but with the vast multitudes who are infinitely 
worse off than we are, we will find in the very laws of 
nature whose benefit we enjoy, and in the place and time 
of our birth and the manner of our early education, 
with which we had nothing to do, reason for measure- 



DAILY THANKSGIVING 123 

less thanksgiving. There is not the meanest in this 
town, who is not infinitely better off than millions of 
men have been and are. There is not one of us, who 
is not infinitely better off than very, very many in our 
town. I do not know a single reason why God should 
so have favoured us. And the good we enjoy, though 
it be the fruit of long centuries of growth of our an- 
cestors, is traceable directly to the good God did for 
us in the gift of His dear Son ; to the changes in men's 
life, to the converting agencies in our lives, and to the 
hope of eternal life, that find their source in Him. 

I cannot pursue the subject further. Simply, the 
good we enjoy whether it be natural or extraordinary, 
is the gift of a Person, of God, of our Father in heaven. 
And it is to persons, to you and me, His dear children. 
The processes of nature and the interpositions of grace 
are alike to be traced to the purpose with which before 
the foundation of the world He chose us in the Beloved. 



THINGS THAT CANNOT BE SHAKEN. 



SEKMON XII. 

Things That Cannot Be Shaken. 

John 18: 37, 38. Jesus answered, Every one that is of the truth 
heareth my voice. Pilate saith unto Him, What is truth? 



"What is truth?" said jesting Pilate; and waited 
not for an answer. He said it to mock the Prisoner 
before him. It seemed so idle for a man in great peril 
of his life, with a whole people against him, first to say 
He was a King, and then to urge that He was bearing 
witness to the truth and that every one that is of the 
truth would hear His voice. This was talking empti- 
ness, Pilate thought, and speaking into the air. And 
this is just what a good many think now . "Who will 
show us any good ?" What is truth ? Is there any 
truth? Is there any test of truth? 

It is worthy of remark that many come to think 
every opinion uncertain by the same way Pilate came. 
Three things contributed to Pilate's opinion that Truth 
is a meaningless word, that witness to truth is fanati- 
cism, and that martyrdom for the truth is folly. One 
was that Pilate was a bad man; a second, that Pilate 
was a busy man ; and the third, that Pilate was in high 
place and in authority. A bad man does not seek the 



126 SUMMER SERMONS 

truth nor wish to recognize it; and even when he sees 
it, rejects and hates it; because the truth condemns 
him. They love darkness rather than light, because 
their deeds are evil. When a coarse person, living in 
self-indulgence, or greed or selfishness, argues that there 
can be no certainty, we know that he is trying to excuse 
himself. He is keeping, as far as he can, away from 
conscience, in whose sphere only moral certitude is to 
be found. \. like opinion has very little weight when 
expressed by a busy man, because he has not time to 
think, and one who does not think has no right to ex- 
press an opinion; and of course, truth is recognisable 
by the mind and spirit. — So one in authority, or in the 
enjoyment of wealth, is apt to be so possessed by the 
reality of 'things/ as to be rendered incapable of judg- 
ing what lies beyond the reach of his eye and hand. 
I speak of that which you may see for yourselves. In 
proportion as in any one of these particulars we are 
like Pilate, we are apt to say, What is truth f 

I am afraid, also, that we are not likely to dis- 
cover the truth, or even that there is truth, on the way 
of intellectual study or speculation. Books confuse us ; 
many opinions distract us ; we may get into the way of 
thinking that Truth must be some wonderful, subtle, 
consistent, intellectual system of the universe; and in 



CERTITUDE 127 



proportion as we embrace and hold fast some such 
system, in its labyrinth we wander from the truth which 
lies under our feet. 

Of course, there is truth; that is, things really 
exist; there is a true description of them; and there 
is a true statement of their relations ; — if only we could 
get at it! And yet if one would only attend to that 
which he can see to be certainly true, how large a 
body of truth would we all possess ! 

I propose, therefore, to ask you to consider with me 
certain truths about ourselves, truths which are true 
of all of us; certain, and fundamental, and not to be 
overlooked in any theory of life or creed; which may 
be submitted to the test given in the text ; and therefore 
may be a basis from which we may rise to greater, 
better and no less certain Truth. 

Consider yourself, dear friends. You are here; 
you are what you are ; you are not what you would like 
to be and hope to become. Now you do not certainly 
know where you are or what you are; and you do not 
certainly know how to become what you regret you are 
not, or hope to attain to. I think this is a truthful 
description of every one of us. As soon as we turn 
our minds inward and begin to inquire, we are lost; 
we find that we are lost; and so the Catechism is not 



128 SUMMER SERMONS 

so far wrong in its confession that we are lost creatures. 
This much all of us can be certain of, — our bewilder- 
ment and helplessness, when we consider ourselves, our 
place in the universe, our past and our future. 

Does the Catechism go too far when it adds that 
we are condemned, lost and condemned creatures? Not 
condemned by God, perhaps : our certain knowledge may 
not reach to that ; and in our argument we have no right 
to assert an agreement between our opinion and ulti- 
mate law; but condemned by ourselves. Who is here 
but has said, what a fool I have been; and in review 
of past, — and even recent, misdoing, has added a 
stronger word than fool? Candid men often have rea- 
son to condemn themselves. In measuring performance 
by intention, and intention by principle, and principle 
by knowledge, we are self-convicted. Now, consider, 
dear friends, is not this true, we are lost and condemned 
creatures? That is the very truth Pilate overlooked. 
That is the truth which the bad, the busy and the 
fortunate try to forget. And it is the truth which those 
entangled in intellectual theory soar out of sight of, as 
they rise above the earth. 

Now for a second truth of equal authority, though 
this may require a little more reasoning and does not 
rest so much on one's absolute knowledge of himself: 



CERTITUDE 129 



I mean the truth that, whether we will or not, and how- 
ever it came about, and whatever its issues may be, we 
are all bound up, involved with, fastened to, other peo- 
ple. Ancestry, education, neighbourhood, obligation, 
interest, affection, make it impossible to be independent 
of others. Traits of those long dead revive in us ; faults 
of the past fetter our purer resolutions. We have made 
ties we cannot break. Ties were made for us which 
cannot be undone. Memories there are, which we can- 
not burn out of our souls. Half of us, certainly; some 
persons say the whole of us ; is made for us and lay and 
lies beyond the power of our choice. Do as we please, 
another's fault plagues and defeats us. Projects we 
disapprove drag us in their train. We are a part of 
others ; they are a part of us. There once was a debate, 
which lasted for centuries, whether there could be such 
a thing as horse, which yet was no particular horse. I 
am sure there never was such a man, who was not a 
particular man, defined and characterized by his rela 
tions to others. He was somebody's son ; he was of such 
a nation; he lived in a certain place; he spoke such a 
language ; he met and was influenced by such and such 
persons; was buffeted by such and such occurrences, 
most of which he had little to do with making, but 
which more likely were the resultant of other men's 



ISO SUMMER SERMONS 

lives; — and so on. This often hampers us. It lessens 
our feeling of responsibility. It is a weight. It besets 
us, as a loose frock would a runner. And yet, though 
we would be glad to change it in some respects, even 
though it be a body of death, we cannot get rid of it. 
It makes our life. Our relation to others is as essential 
a part of our life as our breathing and digestion. This 
is the truth. Here then is another element of truth. 
First, we are lost and condemned creatures. Then we 
are bound up with our fellow-creatures in a way always 
perplexing and often burdensome. 

This is the truth. Not a very cheerful truth, in- 
deed. And, therefore, let me suggest a third truth, 
just as certain and easy to recognize, through which, I 
think, a little light ought to shine. It is, that our souls 
recognize that there might be a better and a happier 
something than they see. I do not say that our con- 
science recognizes a higher law than it obeys — though 
I believe it does ; I do not point to the law in our minds 
that fights against the law in our members, though I 
know it exists; I do not speak of a Judge of all the 
world Who does right, and of a world which will re- 
dress the inequalities of this, though I trust Him and 
look for it; but am content to urge that which no one 
can deny — that even those who are tempted to think 



CERTITUDE 131 



this world is all and that they are doomed to lie down 
in a pestilential swamp and die there, still know there 
is a heaven overarching them, a great expanse of air 
alive with light, where birds fly and sing. In every 
heart, in every human life, in every human conscience, 
there is this feeling of the overarching heaven — a higher 
possible purpose, a possible haj)piness, a possible per- 
formance, a possible extrication, a possible triumphant 
sacrifice for the sake of affection, if no more ; — some- 
thing wider, freer, purer, than that in which we are lost 
and condemned and fettered. 

Dear friends, is not this true ? Is it not true that 
we are such, and in this case, and yet with this feeling ? 

It is a remarkable fact that every one that scrapes 
away the dirt and puts his foot on these facts — every 
one that is of the truth — hears the voice of our Lord 
Jesus Christ. He that is of the truth heareth My voice. 
Let it be but the idea suggested by the Gospel; or the 
historical fact that a Man long ago came declaring such 
a message and died in that way ; or the gentle teaching 
of the Scriptures ; or the present teaching of His follow- 
ers ; there is no man who considers that he is a lost and 
condemned creature, fixed in this curious complex of 
relations with the race, yet stirred and maybe tormented 
by these dreams of possible life, but is touched and at- 



132 SUMMER SERMONS 

tracted by the voice of the Son of Man. He hears it, 
and it speaks to his heart. The idea of a willing com- 
ing into this world of relations — the idea of the Son 
of God becoming a man, a Jew, a descendant of a 
family, a son, a brother in a home, a citizen, a guest, 
a companion, a workman, an object of charity, number- 
ed with the transgressors, a victim of death, — if you 
are of the truth, you cannot forget it! — The idea of 
His coming to seek and to save that which is lost — 
it finds you. The idea of God so loving the world! 
There is the Sun, whence came those gleams of light. 
So, if it were but the idea, we must hear His voice.- — 
And if it was but His aspiration, we must recognize 
in Him the representative of our whole race. He takes 
on Himself our loneliness and condemnation ; He takes 
on Himself the whole burden of our common life ; and 
how truly does He say, I came to bear witness of the 
truth. And every one that is of the truth, heareth My 
voice. And if it is true, if He died for us according 
to the Gospel, and rose again, then hath He redeemed 
us, purchased and bought us, in order that we might be 
His, and live under Him in His kingdom, and serve 
Him in everlasting righteousness, innocence and bless- 
edness. — Ah, let us be of the truth and hear His voice. 



SEEMON XIII. 

How a Man May Be Assured of 
His Salvation, 

Luke 12: 32. Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father's good 
pleasure to give you the kingdom. 

[Eighth Sunday after Trinity.'} 



In a very busy age many do not think about the 
kingdom of God at all. It is painful to remember how 
many bear their part in the world, and go out of it 
without hope; go out of it without hope because they 
gave to their exit and future no forethought. There 
are earnest people; there are who pray and strive to 
enter in at the strait gate; there are a few who con- 
sider the verities of God's Word the prime facts of 
existence; and with such it ever has been a question 
whether it is possible for a man to be assured of his own 
salvation. Can I know that I am saved? Can I re- 
joice in eternal life without a doubt that I possess it? 
Can I go towards the end of this life, and go out from 
it, certain that I am going home to God; or must I 
say as some sing, 



ISJf. SUMMER SERMONS 

" 'Tis a point I long to know, 

Oft it causes anxious thought : 
Do I love the Lord or no, 
Am I His, or am I not?" 

Now we may take as a fundamental fact that God 
wishes all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge 
of the truth. The manifestation of our Lord Jesus 
Christ not only opened a way of salvation for us, but 
declared God's loving will to save us. Wherever His 
Word is preached, whenever a little child is baptized 
into His name, whenever the Holy Supper is adminis- 
tered, there is declared and sealed God's Gospel of salva- 
tion, His will and wish to save us from sin and death 
and the power of the devil. Still, it is no less true that 
some men are not saved. Some keep themselves out- 
side that purpose of salvation. So the question recurs. 
Can I ever know that I am in it, saved, saved beyond 
a peradventure ? 

Our Gospel today reminds us that a man may have 
a false confidence. Our Lord represents a man even 
on the great day of Judgment when the secrets of all 
hearts shall be disclosed, in the face of the Almighty 
saying, Lord, Lord, and confidently claiming that he 
has done wonderful works in the name of the Lord; to 
whom the Lord shall reply, Depart from Me, I never 



CHRISTIAN ASSURANCE 135 

knew you. Yet, while it is thus made clear that we may 
deceive ourselves, our Epistle teaches that there is also 
a true and safe assurance. St. Paul addresses some as 
if there were no doubt, and as if they can entertain no 
doubt, that they are children of God and joint-heirs 
with Christ. They are led by His Spirit, Paul says; 
they say, Abba, Father; the Spirit bears witness with 
their spirit that they are the children of God. This is 
of a piece with that other precious text, Being confident 
of this very thing, that He that hath begun a good work 
in you, will perform it unto the day of Jesus Christ; and 
that other, Whosoever confesseth Me before men, him 
will I also confess. And the false confidence of which 
we have spoken, is illustrated by our Lord's positive de- 
claration, If ye forgive not your brother his trespasses, 
neither will My heavenly Father forgive you; and by 
the confidence of His fellow-guest who cried, Blessed is 
he who shall break bread in the Kingdom of God, — 
whom our Lord told a parable in order to rebuke. 

Let us then hold these indubitable truths : It is our 
Father's good pleasure to give us the kingdom; yet 
some may falsely think they have it; and, on the other 
hand, one may have it, and know he has it, and rejoice 
in this assured confidence. 

Dear friend, have you such an assurance ? Think 



136 SUMMER SERMONS 

— do you know that you have, and are in, the Kingdom 
of God; and that when all earthly things shall pass 
away for you, you will be in the city which hath foun- 
dations, whose builder and maker is God? And if 
you believe this, if you have such a hope, what do you 
base it on ? I regard our Gospel today as God's solemn 
express warning lest some of you should be at peace 
without reason, while the Epistle is an encouragement 
to seek and value the true and immovable basis of 
faith and hope. 

Let us examine our text: Fear not, little flock; it 
is your Father's good pleasure to give you the 'kingdom. 
Now, my hearers, if you can be certain that you are of 
those to whom the Lord Jesus addresses these words, 
you know that you have everlasting life. If you know 
that you are in the little flock — mark that a mere out- 
ward bearing of the name of Jesus Christ does not make 
us members of the little flock: our Gospel precludes 
that: but these words are addressed to those who hear 
and heed the words of Christ, who seek and do the will 
of the Father. Do you belong to that little flock? 
Eemember how beautifully our Lord described the flock 
of which He is the Shepherd — how He goes before and 
they follow after; and how He knows His sheep and 
they know His voice. Though it were a great flight 



CHRISTIAN ASSURANCE 137 

of faith to describe all that shall happen to us in 
Eternity, it needs no great exertion to determine what 
we prefer and seek and listen to and do every day. 
Do you listen to our Lord Jesus' voice every day ? Do 
you listen for it ? Do you seek His words ? And when 
you know what He bids, what He says the Father's 
will is, and when you see the way He goes, do you go 
after Him on that way ? If you do, you are of His little 
flock and He is leading you to the fold. If you hear 
His words and do them, you are building your house on 
a rock that all tempests shall not shake. 

That is the first test of salvation. Any one who 
knows that he prefers the teaching of our Lord Jesus 
Christ to any other, and that he endeavours to obey it 
in spite of everything, is running the race set before 
him, looking unto Jesus, the Author and Finisher of 
his faith, Who is now set down at the Eight Hand of 
God. 

The second test of one's salvation is indicated in 
our text: Fear not, little flock; it is your Father's good 
pleasure to give you the "kingdom. A man may be 
certified, I think, that he is of the little flock that follows 
Christ, or he may know he is not. And so may he 
know that He of Whom the Lord here speaks is his 
Father and therefore speaks to him. I say the Lord's 



138 SUMMER SERMONS 

Prayer every day. I may repeat that precious name 
of God as a mere term ; but if I say it meaning it, if in 
the presence of the great God I can say, Our Father, 
then can I say, It is my Father s good pleasure to give 
me the kingdom. The very assurance that he is my 
Father, is an assurance that I am His child; and if 
His child, then am I His heir, a joint-heir with Christ. 
This also is a test that may be applied. How do you 
look upon God ? as a dreadful Being, to hide from ? as 
a terrible judge? or as our beloved Father in heaven, 
Who pities us as a father pities his children, Who know- 
eth our frame and remembereth that we are dust, Who 
invites us by every gentle promise, and when we turn 
to Him runs to meet us and falls on our neck rejoicing ? 
Dear friend, if you know God is your Father, you know 
that He wishes to give you the kingdom ; and you know 
that nothing shall be able to separate you from His love. 
It will be noted that these tests are not matters for 
ourselves alone. If any one knows that he is trying to 
know and follow Christ, God knows him too. If we 
know the Shepherd's voice, the Lord knoweth them that 
are His. If we recognize and trust our Father in 
heaven, our Father knows them who daily say, Abba, 
Father. It is just inconceivable that on the day of 
Judgment God should say to such, I never knew you ! 



CHRISTIAN ASSURANCE 139 

I would remind you that we are answering the ques- 
tion, whether we can be certain of our salvation. Such 
assurance may not make our salvation any more certain. 
I do not think a man will be lost because his faith is 
weak. It is so certainly our Father's good pleasure to 
give us the kingdom, that faith no bigger than a grain 
of mustard-seed will not be cast out of it. But it is 
clear that if a man is not certain that he needs Christ 
and follows Him; and if for some reason (such as our 
conscience may supply) we look not up to God with the 
confidence of a child; just in that measure we will not 
have an assured hope, we will not be able to say, I know 
in Whom I have believed. 

It is clear that God wishes us to have such con- 
fidence. Everything has been arranged to give us joy 
and peace in believing. The whole message of His 
Word, the whole revelation of Jesus Christ, is a revela- 
tion of the Father. In Baptism He embraces us. And 
in the Holy Supper, while indicating most plainly the 
way of life, He meets us with repeated absolution and 
encouragement . It needs only simplicity in the recep- 
tion of these gifts to produce in our hearts the witness 
of the Spirit that we are indeed the children of God. 

This brings us to the final consideration : how may 
we cultivate such a truthful assurance of our salvation ? 



UO SUMMER SERMONS 

It will comfort and sustain us under all the trials of life. 
It will anchor us within the veil. It will throw a true 
light on everything. There can be nothing worth hav- 
ing in comparison of a faith like that of St. Paul; a 
peace which passeth all understanding, like that of our 
Lord Jesus Christ. 

I answer, Such an assured confidence can be culti- 
vated by openness and simplicity with God. Such 
openness and simplicity may be practised both in our 
approach to Him and in our reception of what He 
gives. If, casting behind us every other conception of 
Him, we hold this, Our Father; and when we pray, go 
to our Father; and say out our childish thoughts to 
Him, and ask with childlike faith — be sure He will 
answer us like a father ; and between you and Him will 
grow up a mutual recognition, that admits of no doubt 
at all. The distinctions of doctrine, the petty consid- 
erations with reference to human abstract ideas of deity, 
judgment and law, which often occupy our mind, fall 
out of view altogether, if we come to know that God 
and we are Father and children; He, our Father, Who 
has said all these kind words to us, and Whose good 
pleasure it is to give us the kingdom. 

This, it is clear, involves an equal simplicity in 
the reception of His gifts. If our wise Father says, 



CHRISTIAN ASSURANCE 141 

This is the way, walk ye in it, an open and simple soul 
will go that way, and as he goes will grow in the 
assurance of its pleasantness and peace. Just this is 
what I mean by simplicity: it is the unquestioning 
obedience to what we know to be right. From other 
sources questions rise. It is possible to ensnare, confuse, 
and pervert conscience. Yet he who listens for it will 
hear God's voice, and he who doeth the will of God 
abideth forever. 

In the Abba, Father of the Apostle Paul, I have 
always seen the Our Father of the Lord's Prayer. That 
prayer is to be taken in two ways. If it shows us how 
we may come to God, it shows also how we may please 
Him. If there we are taught what we may ask of Him, 
in it He says what He asks of us. If it daily refreshes 
us with assurance that He is our affectionate Father 
and we are His children indeed, it repeats His simple 
prescription of duty every day, so that we may know 
how we can build our house upon the rock. I am sure 
that whoever will simply and with open heart try to 
pray and live the Lord's Prayer, will grow in the con- 
viction that his life is hid with Christ in God. 



THE GIFT OF THE SPIRIT. 



SEKMON XIV. 

The Gift of the Spirit. 

1 Cor. 12: 3. Wherefore I give you to understand, that no man 
speaking by the bpirit of God calleth Jesus accursed; and 
that no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the 
Holy Ghost. 

[Tenth Sunday after Trinity.'] 



A few weeks ago we considered the question 
whether a man can be certain that he has eternal life; 
and in connection with it the significance of the filial 
spirit, which is inculcated and exercised by the Lord's 
Prayer. The first thought of our Epistle is very much 
like that. It shows how a man may certify himself 
whether he has or has not the Spirit of God. If we say 
Jesus is Lord, we have, we have received, the Holy 
Ghost. This is the simple test; and to many a man it 
must bring the overwhelming conviction that he is a 
temple of God because the Spirit of God dwelleth in 
him. 

It will occur to every one of you that this saying 
is not a mere saying with the lips. One might repeat 
the words without any purpose. It does involve a 



1U SUMMER SERMONS 

confession of Jesus Christ. To say Jesus is Lord, is to 
acknowledge Him as Master: I believe that He is my 
Lord. I think it means to say that we belong to 
Him; to be known as His; "to wear His livery," if 
there be such ; to be among His followers, disciples, ser- 
vants; to take and wear and use whatever marks one 
man from others as a servant of Jesus Christ. Paul 
liked to call himself Christ's bondman. 

Any such an honest confession of Jesus Christ — 
a confession of Him was apt to be well considered in 
the days when it brought persecution and suffering — 
was a proof that the Holy Spirit of God had come into 
a man's soul. 

To say Jesus is Lord is moreover to acknowledge 
His right and authority in one's soul ; to carry that con- 
viction about with us; to submit to it every purpose; 
to subject to it every other tie and attraction. And 
when this conviction is so real, and is always present 
and always acknowledged, you may be sure that the 
Holy Spirit of God is in your heart. No man can 
say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost. 

And now, what is this — to have the Holy Spirit 
with us ? It means that the manifestation of God which 
occupied the centuries whose history is preserved in the 
Old Testament, and which culminated in the Gospel 



THE GIFT OF THE SPIRIT 145 

of our Saviour, is continued in our own heart and life ; 
that He who came down on Pentecost, and glorified the 
Early Church with miraculous gifts, and Who alone 
can work saving faith in a man's heart, has come to 
me, to you, to throw down the strongholds of evil there, 
to bring forth the virtues which are called the fruits 
of the Spirit, and to enable us for every good work. 
The presence of the Spirit in us is the presence of the 
vital breath of the body of Christ. By it we are united 
with God ; and not only are encouraged with the promise 
of salvation, but furnished with the power of an end- 
less life. 

It is to be expected that if we have received the Holy 
Spirit, we ought also to receive His gifts. Of old He 
made of some men skillful artisans and artists. He 
inspired them to do and speak the will of God. And the 
Early Church becomes somewhat of a puzzle to us, 
because in it we find men and women enabled by the 
Spirit of God to speak prophecies, to interpret strange 
tongues, to heal diseases, to do miracles, while others 
were acknowledged to be miraculously fitted for offices 
such as we are called to discharge. If we receive the 
same Spirit, why do we not feel or see the same effects ? 

In answer to this question, it is to be noted, first, 
that the manner of the Spirit's manifestation is not to 



U6 SUMMER SERMONS 

be taken as the test of the reality of His presence. Not 
because we heal, or work miracles, or prophesy, not be- 
cause we cannot do such things, can we decide that we 
either have or have not the Spirit of God. If in our 
hearts we say Jesus is Lord, then we have the Spirit. 
If from our hearts we cast Him out, then we have not 
the Spirit, no matter what wonderful works we are able 
to do. 

Secondly, it is characteristic that there are differ- 
ent gifts and a diversity of operations, though there be 
but one Spirit. ISTot everybody had the same gift in 
the Apostolic Church. Some did miracles ; another was 
apt to teach; another was fitted to guide and govern; 
another had the gift of helping, perhaps a sort of per- 
suasive sympathy that held up the hands of everybody 
else who had something more definite to do. And Paul 
found it especially necessary to admonish the Corin- 
thians not to compare one man's gift with another's, 
but to recognize that each was useful and each was to 
be received as the gift of the Spirit to a particular man 
for a certain office in the Church, unique, exclusive and 
indispensable in its place. 

And we ought to be admonished that just as the 
gifts of the Spirit were different then, so there is no 
reason to think that the gifts of the Spirtit to us and 



THE GIFT OF TEE SPIRIT U7 

now must be of the same pattern as those, and are to be 
found in this particular list. The Spirit of God did 
not exhaust Himself in the first centuries. Some of 
those gifts would be of no use now. The gift of tongues 
served a purpose ; now it would perplex and disturb the 
Church. The gift of healing would divert us from 
a wholesome dependence on our heavenly Father. The 
long centuries of Christian training have made such 
extraordinary powers as useless to us as they were among 
Christians of Jewish education then, while essential 
among those gathered from Heathendom. And if some 
of the gifts which then were so highly prized are not 
to be desired now, is it not equally probable that there 
are other gifts needed now, though then unknown ? and 
that the Almighty will not leave His Church destitute 
of His gifts which are requisite for the ordered work- 
ing and growth of every part? 

If you bear these considerations in mind, you will 
see that it is essential to hold this — Jesvs is Lord; and 
as you keep that, and let it have its perfect work, look- 
ing to Him, and obeying Him always, certainly God 
will unfold in you His gift — in us a delightful variety 
of fresh and exhaustless aptitudes and powers for the 
benefit of His Church. 

It has seemed to me that it might be useful to count 



148 SUMMER SERMONS 

up and tell over some of the gifts which the Spirit of 
God may confer: but this might be a presumption and 
might lead some of you to apply my catalogue as a 
pattern, though I have just tried to keep you from seek- 
ing such a prescription in the catalogues given by 
Paul. 

To the test of the presence of the Spirit in us, and 
the injunction not to expect Him to make us all alike, 
or all like the Christians of another age, yet to expect 
that He will give gifts unto us, I have yet to add this — 
whatever God gives to us, whatever power or aptitude 
developes in us in consequence of our determined obe- 
dience to Jesus our Lord, is to profit withal. Now this 
means, it is to be used. It is not to be hung on the wall 
as an ornament. It is not to be laid up for a rainy day. 
It is not to be buried in a napkin. It is to be used. It 
is intended to do its work. Whatever duty you are 
called to, discharge it. Whatever ability God gives you, 
use it. The Church is not a bath for luxurious idlers. 
It is not a sham-battle. It is a harvest-field. It is at 
war. 

And when the Apostle says, It is to profit withal, 
by that odd expression he does not mean that God gives 
you His gifts for you to make your own profit out of 
them. That would be contrary to the whole doctrine 



THE GIFT OF TEE SPIRIT lJfi 

of Christ. The interest on your talent is not intended 
for your own coffers. The "profit" of the text is better 
rendered by our word contribution. The very idea of a 
gift of the Holy Ghost is that it is a divinely-given fit- 
ness for discharge of your part and office in the Church 
of God. It is a throb of the life of Christ in you ; and 
the welfare of the whole Church depends on every one 
in it, completely possessed by the conviction that Jesus 
is Lord, doing all he is called to do and is fitted to do ; 
the faithful action and ordered interaction of every part 
making increase of the whole body. 

I hope you have caught the lesson: If the Holy 
Ghost gives you a power or aptitude, it is to be exerted 
as your contribution to the life and service of the whole 
body of our Lord Jesus Christ. To do anything else, 
is to sin against the Holy Ghost. 

I am concerned, however, to make perfectly clear 
what I mean by the Church of Christ. Most certainly 
I believe that whatever gifts He may give you are to 
be exercised primarily here, in this congregation and 
for the benefit of it; and then for that Christian com- 
munion of which this congregation forms a part; and 
always with a consciousness of that whole body of faith- 
ful people on earth who are known as the Christian 
Church. Yet we ought to guard ourselves against the 



150 SUMMER SERMONS 

narrow idea that only offices done on Sunday, or within 
consecrated walls, or for the service of an organized 
Christian body, are works of Christian service. In 
an early day every act of loving-kindness to a fellow- 
Christian was easily seen to be a contribution such as 
is spoken of in the text ; and it is no less so now, though 
so many nations are embraced by Christendom. The 
gifts of the Spirit to us may be intended to find their 
sphere in the home, in acts of patriotism, in service to 
to the community, even in offices of friendship, as well 
as in the service of worship. Wherever our conviction 
that Jesus is Lord leads us, whatever it impels us to 
do, whatever it fits us to contribute, there is our gift 
and the field of the exercise for it. The ordered health 
of the whole body of Christ depends on our promptitude, 
and fidelity in that hour and in that place. 

If we have the Spirit of Christ, I think we will 
be eager for His useful gifts. Pray God to give you His 
power for good. And whatever we hafe by means of 
which good can be done to others, it is our duty to use 
it as Christ commands. These are two lessons impressed 
on us today. And if I were to speak to you again, I 
could impress no better lessons on you : Covet the best 
gifts; and do and give what you can, wherever the 
opportunity can be found. 



SERMON XV. 

A Change of Heart. 

Eph. 4: 23. Be renewed in the spirit of your mind. 

[Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity.'] 



We often befog ourselves in speaking of matters 
of religion, by using terms which in familiar use have 
got an indefinite meaning. We may argue all day about 
Justification and the New Birth and Predestination, 
before we discover that our opponents and we do not 
mean the same thing by the same word. Such cant 
terms are like counters; like coin, very useful to pass 
from one to another as the representatives of real things, 
but in themselves as useless as the gold upon the table 
of Midas. So we have heard people talk of a change of 
heart. One hears that God forgives our sins freely for 
Christ's sake, and asks, But is not a change of heart 
necessary ? Another says, A change of heart is essential. 
Another is condemned because he does not show a 
change of heart. But can we be certain that all who talk 
of it, and all who profess to have it, and all who lament 
because they have it not, know what a change of heart 
is? 



152 SUMMER SERMONS 

This Epistle may be useful to us through the light 
it throws on a change of heart. 'Not that it is a defini- 
tion of the term; nor does it essay to tell us all about 
it. The Bible never descends to scientific definitions 
and distinctions. It does not answer direct precise ques- 
tions, like a Catechism does. Its sayings are lively 
words to living men, fitted to their especial need. But 
rightly considered, they yield an insight into the prin- 
ciples of the will and the grace of God. 

This Epistle shows us first of all what part of the 
process called "a change of heart" is instantaneous, and 
what part is gradual. 

There is a delicate difference in the grammatical 
forms in the original, which makes this distinction per- 
fectly clear. The Ephesians are bidden to put off the 
old man, and to put on the new man; and the words 
employed show that the putting on and putting off are 
done promptly, at once, in a single act. But between 
the two is the further injunction, And be ye renewed in 
the spirit of your mind; where the delicate change in 
the grammatical form (to which I have alluded) shows 
that this process of renewal is gradual and continued. 
See, this process connects two acts. A man puts off the 
old man corrupt according to the lusts of deceit. He 
then is gradually renewed in the spirit of his mind. 



A CHANGE OF HEART 153 

And this process leads up to the final act, for which 
it prepares and enables him: to put on the new man 
created after God in holiness and righteousness of the 
truth. 

St. Paul means by this to teach that as soon as a 
man's eyes are opened to his sinfulness, he at once with 
all the energy vouchsafed him by the Spirit of God, 
puts off his old self, "drowns him by daily sorrow and 
repentance", as our Catechism says. There is no long 
parley; no pitiful toleration of ingrained faults; but 
a total and unyielding condemnation and avoidance and 
resistance of one's evil disposition, and natural weak- 
nesses, and faults. This is a part of repentance; and 
it seems to be presupposed in any real desire to be for- 
given. 

That is a change. It is not a complete change. It 
is not a guarantee of holiness. A future change must 
be wrought. It is wrought by God in a man's spirit. 
A new spirit is created within him. And this is not the 
work of a moment, a day, a year. It would be inter- 
esting to consider the complexity of the process of re- 
newal ; how the Spirit of the Living God speaks in every 
word of the Bible to the awakened soul ; how He brings 
every thought and intent of the heart before the newly- 
sensitised conscience; how He opens opportunities to 



154 SUMMER SERMONS 

test and discipline the trembling and self-distrustful 
hope; using every natural faculty, every human rela- 
tion, every divine gift, until ultimately the man is made 
new in the very spirit of his mind. But we dare not 
linger to detail all this. Enough, that having determin- 
ately put off our old man (and this, I trust, we all have 
done), we are now in that process of the renewal of the 
spirit of our mind. 

The end of that process is our ability and will to 
put on the new man created after God in righteousness 
and holiness of the truth. Brethren, it doth not yet 
appear what we shall be; but we know that we shall be 
lihe Him, when we shall see Him as He is. This com- 
plete restoration of the Image of God waits for the 
heavenly Paradise. We are not forgiven and saved be- 
cause holy; but we are forgiven and rendered safe that 
we may become holy. This putting on the body of 
Christ's glory is the act which marks the completion of 
the renewal of the spirit of our mind. 

Having learned what part of a change of heart is 
instantaneous, and what part is gradual, let us further 
consider the nature of this renewal of the spirit of our 
mind. What does that mean? The mind, in the lan- 
guage of these Epistles, is that part of our being where 
the Spirit of God meets our spirit. It is the most ex- 



A CHANGE OF HEART 155 

alted part of us ; the most inward ; the deepest, realest, 
centre of a man. 'Now, observe that the renewal or 
change which the Spirit of God sets out to produce is 
not a new set of acts; nor is it merely a new way of 
acting. I will acknowledge that a Christian will do 
new acts; and it is certain that he will do old acts in 
a new way. But who does not see that this is much less, 
and different from being renewed in the spirit of his 
mind f What God has begun in us, what He intends for 
us, what He has set His heart upon, is a renewal of the 
very source of our life, of our inmost being. That is 
the reason St. Paul says, In Christ we are a new creat- 
ure. Old things have passed away. All things have 
become new. 

Let us consider the illustrations of this St. Paul 
presents. He seems to have had in his congregation per- 
sons who formerly had lied, stolen, and got angry, and 
been indecent in speech: perhaps liars and thieves, 
furious and filthy men and women. Such well-defined 
examples make the argument clearer. They were to 
lie no more, but speak the truth; when they got angry, 
they were not to let themselves be carried on to sin, and 
be made a prey of the devil, nor even to hold a grudge 
from day to day ; they were to steal no more ; and they 
were forbidden to let any corrupt speech proceed from 



156 SUMMER SERMONS 

their mouth. That was putting off the old man. Then 
they were to be animated by an entirely new spirit. 
The liar was to speak truth with his neighbour because 
we are members of one another! Shall the eye deceive 
the hand ? Should heart and brain and stomach in 
one body work at cross purposes ? The natural temper 
was to be tempered by conscience. The thief, instead 
of stealing, was to work, with his own hands, that he 
might have to give. And the careless fellow whose un- 
weighed speech had formerly corrupted his fellows, was 
to aim at saying only what was good for building up, as 
the need might be. 

You will observe that the new spirit here exem- 
plified has a definite character. It is a spirit of genuine 
regard for other people. It is recognition that no one 
of us stands alone, or lives for himself, but that we all 
are incorporated into one body with one another in 
Christ. The new acts of a regenerate man therefore do 
not proceed from a selfish spirit, but from a conscious- 
ness of our part and portion in our fellowmen in com- 
munion with Jesus Christ our Lord. For the prayer 
of our Master was not a vagrant sigh, but expresses the 
abiding purpose of God, manifested in everything He 
does or gives for us, That they all may be one; I in them, 
and Thou in Me, that they may be made perfect in one. 



A CHANGE OF HEART 157 

I think it clear that this is the spirit which natur- 
ally results from the conviction that God has forgiven 
us for Christ's sake. It is an overwhelming thought that 
every one we worshipped with this morning stands to 
God in exactly the same relation we do — washed, 
cleansed, justified, in the Name of the Lord Jesus and 
by the Spirit of our God. It overwhelms, I mean, all 
the little differences which obtain between us. And 
when we think that our Lord died for the whole world 
that lieth in wickedness, and seeks all with the same love 
that appeals so to our hearts, do we not glow with love 
for the world too, as for lost and wounded and suffer- 
ing members of our own body? 

We must not leave this subject without pointing 
out how the institutions of the Church arranged by our 
Lord Jesus Christ serve this gradual renewal of the 
spirit of our mind. One who desires to put off the old 
man, and that he may put on the new man wishes to be 
renewed in the spirit of his mind, will not despise the 
Word and Sacraments, but will seek and use them. 
Baptism for an adult is such an act of putting off, and 
it is an appeal of a good conscience unto God. And for 
us who were baptized in infancy, our Baptism is quick- 
ened and maintained by a daily sorrow and repentance 
for sin. In the Holy Supper the two elements which 



158 SUMMER SERMON 8 

contribute to a spirit of sincere regard for our fellowmen 
are prominent. There we are certified that our sins are 
forgiven and we are joined to Christ ; and there we have 
fellowship with one another. It is the social Sacra- 
ment. It publishes and it effects the unity of regen- 
erate men in the Second Adam. An open-hearted recep- 
tion of the Holy Supper renews the spirit of our mind, 
so that we consider that we are members of one another, 
and work that we may give, and curb our tongues that 
nothing may proceed from our lips but that which is 
good to build them up. 

It would lead me too far from the Epistle, and per- 
haps confuse your recollection of the fruitful thoughts 
it has suggested, if I were to go on to show in how many 
ways the Word and the Holy Supper effect the work of 
renewal in us. It is not the mere hearing of the ear; 
it is not the unconsidered eating of consecrated bread; 
but it is the daily, continued presence in us of that 
Spirit Who resides and comes in these gifts of God; it 
is the daily cultivation and exercise of that Spirit in 
us, which get their tone from these gifts of God. There 
is a daily sifting ; a daily revealing of our thoughts ; the 
unbroken presence of a Benediction, a Life, a Holy 
Spirit ! 



SEKMON XVI. 



The Characteristic Virtue of Christianity. 

Phil. 4: 5. Let your moderation be known unto all men. The 
Lord is at hand. 

[Fourth Sunday in Advent.] 



Here is an idea peculiar to Christianity. I think 
I have a correct notion of it, and will try to explain it 
to you. There is a great fascination about a moral idea 
which is peculiar to the Gospel. Such, for instance, is 
the Spiritual Understanding, of which St. Paul speaks. 
We know what the understanding is, a mental faculty 
with which every man is endowed; but the idea of a 
spiritual understanding, a something some have and 
some have not, a desirable faculty, which is a gift of 
God, piques our curiosity. Indeed every most familiar 
moral conception gets a new colour and new meaning 
in the 'New Testament. We have become so accustomed 
to the Bible, and our forefathers have been for so many 
generations, that we no longer discern the immense 
difference between our current moral ideas and those 
which were common before Christ came. Christian 



160 SUMMER SERMONS 

humility, for instance, is very different from humility 
which is not Christian ; but humility did not convey the 
same idea before the New Testament took it up. 

Let your moderation be known to all men. Here 
is a word which our translators have been troubled to 
translate. Sometimes they say Moderation, sometimes 
Gentleness; yet neither word tells the shape and 
character of the virtue it requires. 

First of all, it certainly is demanded of a Chris- 
tian that he be moderate in all things; and this of course 
implies that he moderate all his appetites. I hope you 
recognize that it is not proper for a Christian to say, I 
cannot help my disposition. It were as well for God 
to be satisfied with the sinfulness of the world. We 
must correct, master, control our dispositions. They 
are mines, from which the ore must be dug and refined, 
and the slag must be thrown away. All our appetites 
must be disciplined. We must not drink or eat too 
much, or what is harmful to ourselves or others; and 
our habits must be formed so as to answer to and serve 
Christian faith and Charity. The Moderation of the 
Christian is the opposite of all Excess. Let your mod- 
eration be known unto all men. 

It is easy on reading today's Epistle to see that this 
lesson refers especially to our judgments on our fellow- 



MODERATION 161 



men. The moderation required of a Christian man is 
not only a control of all his appetites, but clemency, a 
Christian clemency, in the judgments he passes on 
others. Yon know how often this is insisted on in the 
New Testament. Judge not, and ye shall not he judged, 
said our Lord. Who art thou who judgest another man's 
servant? St. Paul added. It is repeated so often be- 
cause here is a fault to which we are prone. And it is an 
unbrotherly and therefore unchristian thing. But when 
we are urged to moderation we are not only told not to 
be quick to judge where we are not called to judge, but 
are instructed how to judge in those cases in which we 
can hardly help forming and expressing an opinion. 
One whose moderation is known to all men will suspend 
judgment as long as he can, and then will not too closely 
measure his brother against the most rigid rule of abso- 
lute right. He will make allowance. Strict judgment 
should be for ourselves. We must not be censorious. 
We cannot be rigid, inasmuch as our understanding of 
the Law, of another man's duty, of his capacity, and of 
his performance or fault, cannot be perfect. We must 
always keep in mind that the Lord is at hand. We can 
safely leave even the worst offender to His judgment. 
And we dare not forget that He will shortly judge us 
too. Let our opinions of what others do or leave un- 



162 SUMMER SERMONS 

done be moderated by this thought of the near judg- 
ment of ourselves and others at the seat of God! 

But this idea of Moderation extends not merely to 
the judgment we form of our neighbours, but also to 
the opinions we form and entertain. It is a great mis- 
take to hold that a man is not responsible for his opin- 
ions. At first I am amused when a person very posi- 
tively says, Well, so and so is my opinion; and reiter- 
ates it as if that were an end of all argument ; but it is 
dreadful for one to shut himself up against correction. 
We are responsible for our opinions, because some opin- 
ions accord with facts and some do not, and we ought to 
be open to the truth and ready and eager to revise our 
opinions in accordance with it. And, besides, we are 
responsible for the spirit in which our opinions are 
formed. Some are narrow, prejudiced, selfish; and they 
cultivate opinions which make a triple wall of brass about 
their besetting sin. One whose moderation is known to 
all men, on the other hand, is gentle and fair even in 
his unuttered thoughts. There also he extends to persons 
and things the indulgence and mercy he asks for himself. 
He makes allowance for all the unknown factors of the 
matter. Having reached a conclusion, he does not reg- 
ister it as as unalterable as the decrees of the Medes and 
Persians. Such a man cannot be a zealot, so madly 



MODERATION 163 



attached to his own conviction that he will for the sake 
of it over-ride the convictions of others. Even when he 
thinks himself right, and others wrong, he has confidence 
enough in the truth, and insight enough into error, to 
await the coming of the Lord. The moderate man is 
steadfast; he can be a martyr; but not a persecutor. 
Neither can such a man be what the French call a 
doctrinaire, that is, a man of one idea. You know how 
common it is for persons to be so possessed by a great 
idea that they can think of nothing else. Some plan of 
reformation, some work promising benefit to others, some 
religious truth which has found special confirmation in 
their own lives, fills their whole atmosphere, and they 
think everybody is narrow-minded, cold, backsliding, 
corrupt, who does not work at their side with equal out- 
cry and effort. E"or do I think a moderate man can be 
an enthusiast, . He can be deeply interested, but this 
interest is restrained, controlled, patient, enduring; 
keeping the end in view, it considers alsv/ the means, and 
the difficulties, and expends its resources with fore- 
thought. In short, moderation supposes a constant ref- 
erence to the immense relations of conduct and opinion. 
Always giving thanks to God, always asking of Him all 
things, never consenting to be anxious about anything, 
and mindful that the Lord is at hand, it sets all opinions 



164 SUMMER SERMONS 

and all duties between these two terms — God Who gives 
all, and God Who before very long shall take account 
of all again, and set wrong things right. 

It will be objected that such moderation weakens 
character. It is the zealots, the enthusiasts, who accom- 
plish most; and I suppose that if one had to answer 
quickly he would say that it would be better for any 
congregation if it were made up of zealots rather than of 
moderate men. But I think that it would be a very 
uncomfortable, a quarrelsome, an explosive, an impossi- 
ble congregation. Moderate men are not appreciated. 
The few zealots accomplish what they do because there 
are moderate men to be moved and to keep the equilib- 
rium. They are to the zealots as the planets in the 
heavens are to the comets. Moderation does not weaken 
character. It broadens it. It makes it less acrid. It 
sweetens. It is the flavour of the fruit. 

The pattern of Christian moderation, as of every 
other Christian virtue, is to be seen in our Lord. If 
you take His answer to the lawyer in which He said 
the parable of the Good Samaritan, or consider what 
He said when the woman that was a sinner anointed His 
feet, you will find a peculiar inversion of the thought in 
each case which does not lead to exactly the logical con- 
clusion we would have expected. He does not there 



MODERATION 165 



force upon His interlocutor an absolute maxim. He 
begets an original conviction. In the story of the woman 
taken in adultery, in His conduct concerning the tax 
Peter and He paid at Capernaum, in the answer to 
those who asked whether it is lawful to pay tribute to 
Caesar, in His reply to those who reported that one who 
followed not with them was casting out devils in His 
Name, He showed His moderation — this fairness; and 
in these cases and in many others suggested thoughts 
we look into and study and question and debate about 
until they rather cultivate a living and progressive prin- 
ciple of conduct than lay down for it a rigid series of 
rules. He also judged nothing before the time. And 
He set us the example of letting the light of God shine 
on every side of a subject, before we dismiss it as settled 
and condemned. 

How are we to cultivate such moderation? By 
keeping in mind that the Lord is at hand. It is said 
that these words formed the watchword, the counter-sign 
and talisman of the first Christians; and hence their 
force in this place. If a child were left for a while to 
mind his brothers and sisters, he would be kinder and 
less rigid when he knew the mother's hand was on the 
latch again. And so would we be freer from a perni- 
cious self-consciousness and self-seeking, and from 



166 SUMMER SERMON 8 

worldly motives, if we were alive to the fact that the 
Lord is at hand. O, how slow would we be to condemn 
our brother if we realized that he was near to the final 
judgment: how ready would we be to beg God's mercy 
for him. The thought will cultivate our sense of re- 
sponsibility. And we will not be eager to embrace and 
defend opinions which must shortly be disclosed and 
tried at the judgment-seat of Christ. Indeed the secret 
of right conduct and right opinion will be found in 
keeping always before the eye of the soul the Eternal 
Fact which bounds our life — the heavenly Father from 
Whom all good comes, the Divine Judge to Whom all 
existence tends. This purifies, adjusts, corrects. 



SERMON XVII. 

The Inner Life. 

Col. 3:3. Ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. 



What wonderful skill our Lord Jesus Christ had 
in drawing to the light and invigorating the hidden 
life of men. He Himself was a revelation of the reality 
of that life, of its firm basis in God, and of its eventual 
triumph. But, as He went about, His words and man- 
ner quickened it in every heart and brought it to utter- 
ance. Who suspected that Zacchseus, a rich man and 
getting rich, and looked upon with distrust by many, 
had deep down in his soul a fount of penitent confes- 
sion and prayer ? But when Jesus came, it burst forth. 
And so Nicodemus, stately as he was and conformed 
to the manners of the other worldly counsellors, could 
not but come to Jesus by night with eager questionings, 
which betray the real religion that was in him. 

Let us meditate a little on that hidden life — on 
your hidden life. Men do not see all that is going on 
in you; do they, dear friends? And, besides, there is 
more in you than you yourself know — a life that some- 
times is manifested and startles us by its intensity. 



168 SUMMER SERMONS 

Here is the life of the body; then is the life of the 
intellect; then is the life of the world. We are busied 
from morning to night; our life is made for us; we 
have little time to think; we derive our maxims from 
the world around us ; we are no better than our fathers 
were ; but all the time we are conscious, though perhaps 
we are unwilling to acknowledge it, that there is a pro- 
cess of life deep down in us — a personal life, apart from 
everybody, shy, keen, watchful, — a life among the things 
that are unseen. Sometimes it gets uppermost, as at a 
funeral, when we stand near the body of a friend, or 
when in the summer twilight we are alone; or perhaps 
it climbs up over books and merchandise right in the 
midst of our work and looks us in the face ; or it star- 
tles us with a pang when we are merry. Men are won- 
derful beings. Think of the hasty present; reflect on 
the influence of the past; consider the future. So is 
there the man whom everybody sees and who sees him- 
self ; and in a cavern in his soul lurks a foul demo- 
niacal savage, who is the man as he would be and may 
become but for the grace of God; and hiding, timid 
and inexperienced as a little child, is the true man, the 
centre of conscience, faith and love, in which resides 
what is left of the original image of God. 

Blessed Sunday, when the inner man can get 



TEE INNER LIFE 169 

breath. As if you and I stood alone, I say, Do you 
not recognize the truth of this — We have a life that is 
hidden. 

That life is very precious. It was begotten by the 
Word of God and Holy Baptism. We know that such 
as we are and appear to be are very much what the 
world makes us. But our hidden life is what it is in 
spite of the world. It is checked, withheld, upheld, 
encouraged, quickened, by influences that come out of 
the Unseen. 

That life is very precious. For the sake of it, by 
virtue of it, we respect ourselves. If men blame us, 
if our outward behaviour is not what it should have 
been, we turn to what we intended, or take refuge in 
our penitence, we rejoice to think we are not simply 
the worldlings we seem to be. And who of you would 
give your hidden life up and go back to the selfish, sav- 
age, hopeless life that was nailed to the Cross by our 
Lord Jesus Christ? 

Your hidden life is not alone. It is a great thing 
to recognize that there is such a life in us. We would 
have an estimate of any other creature on earth if we 
discovered such a process in him. We have additional 
respect for a fellowman if one can say, O, you do not 
know all that is in him — the purity and truthfulness 



170 SUMMER SERMONS 

and humility that are deep down in him. And if this 
fact is noteworthy, it is also most significant that that 
hidden life of each of us, voiceless and deaf though we 
may be to one another, the hidden life of all of us is 
hid with Christ. I hope to show you this. His quick- 
ening power over Zacchseus and Nicodemus and the like 
is a revelation of a relation in which He stands to all 
our souls; and what He does for us and to us is an 
appropriate commentary on the Resurrection of Him 
Who ever liveth for us. 

Consider: Is it not true that your hidden life is 
based on the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, and is 
upheld and fed by the worship of His Church and 
chiefly by communion with Him in the Holy Supper? 
Is it not true that it cannot be wholly extinguished while 
such worship and communion are maintained; and 
languishes more and more as they are neglected ? And 
it is equally true that our inward man is renewed day 
by day if we recognize our dependence on Him, and seek 
Him, asking His help, trusting His companionship, 
and seeking in His word the rule of life. Those of you 
who have done this, know it is so. Those who under 
the temptations of the world have turned away from 
Him, know it is so. Hidden that life is, but it is hid 
with Christ. 



THE INNER LIFE 111 



Now I think this great fact is worthy of comment. 
We trace in history the far-reaching consequences of an 
event; in studying philosophy we mark that the happy 
thought of a gifted man lives on and proves the hinge 
on which turn the destiny of centuries and the opinions 
of multitudes ; it is likewise not to be overlooked that the 
hidden life of all of us, of all Christendom, is hid with 
Christ. I may add, the hidden life of mankind is hid 
with Christ ; for it is a fact that wherever His Word is 
carried the inward man hears His voice — to Japanese, 
Hindoo, African, the voice of the Gospel comes like the 
wellknown call of the Shepherd over the damp and cool 
air of Evening to a lost and hungry sheep. He has the 
secret of the hidden life. He is the unity of the hidden 
life. He is the basis and life of that life. And when 
once He is known, that life cannot continue to exist 
without Him. Our Scriptures speak of a resurrection 
unto newness of life. As the life of Him that was dead 
and is alive again, steals down to the fountain of our 
being by means of the Word and the Sacrament, it 
quickens our hidden life, we live by the faith of the Son 
of God, Christ is formed in us, the hope of glory ! 

Kemember how He prayed that we might be one, 
God in Him and He in us. The life that is with Christ, 
is hid in God. The words necessarily suggest a place, 



172 SUMMER SERMONS 

a thing — as if God were a thing, and in a place, and our 
life was put into it and shut up there. So we say, 
In Him we live and move and have our being ; and are 
tempted to think of God as a great sea or atmosphere, 
in which the Universe is swimming. Wisely did the 
old theologians remind us that everything that is owes 
its existence to God and continues to be only because of 
the continued exercise of His will ; our very choice, and 
impulsive words, and utterance of disposition, being 
rendered possible only by His conscious present per- 
mission and concurrence. How much more evident is 
it that that hidden life, that heart of purer metal be- 
neath the slag and alloys of this surface world, flows 
on because maintained and fed by God. Here, then, we 
have a series of truths — the inward man, the inward 
man with Christ, and He in the bosom of His Father. 
There is the final unity of God and man. 

Still it is a hidden life. It is not of this world. 
We do not know it in its full shape ourselves. It is 
hidden with God until present calamity be overpast. 
And it doth not yet appear what we shall be. When 
Christ, Who is our life, shall appear, we shall appear 
with Him in glory. We know we shall be like Him 
when we shall see Him as He is. 

Inevitably, the things that now are will fall to 



THE INNER LIFE 173 

pieces. Our life that now is will cease. But can our 
hidden life cease to be ? Is there not something there 
that cannot be holden of death, — doubly immortal be- 
cause of its union with the Prince of Life, Who was 
dead, but Who is alive for evermore ? How evident does 
it become to one who stops his ears to listen, that in our 
Lord God took to Himself and redeemed and glorified 
the hidden life of men. Not their outward life — but 
that which is hid with Christ in God. 



THE COMFORT OF THE SCRIPTURES. 



SEKMOST XVIII. 

The Comfort of the Scriptures. 

Rom. 15: 4. Whatsoever things were written aforetime were 
written for our learning; that we through patience and 
comfort of the Scriptures might have hope. 

[Second Sunday in Advent ,] 



Although from early youth we have been accustomed 
to regard the Holy Scriptures as the source of patience 
and comfort, I doubt whether all of us know how 
to derive patience and comfort from them. Many who 
are exposed to great temptations, and many who are 
bewildered by great sorrows, although they read their 
Bible night and morning, fail to get from them peace 
and strength, and begin to doubt either the reality of 
God's Word or His mercy to them. 

I propose, therefore, to linger over this beautiful 
verse to ask in what way the Holy Scriptures bring to 
us patience and comfort. The patience that is meant 
is both resignation and hope under trial; it is at the 
same time endurance and willing giving-up of self for 
the sake of others. The comfort is the peace of those 
who courageously follow the voice of God. Does God's 
Word give you such patience and such courage ? 



176 SUMMER SERMON 8 

Some people treat the Bible as if it worked mag- 
ically. They are foolish enough to let it fall open at 
random, that whatever verse their eyes may first rest 
upon may decide their question; forgetting that the 
Bible is God's Word about human affairs in human lan- 
guage addressed to reasonable men. It is dangerous 
also to lay too great stress on isolated texts. No promise 
of God's Word is effectual unless it be taken with the 
context. You ought to know the man through whom it 
was said, the men to whom, the times, and the peculiar 
purpose God had in view in it; and if this method 
of estimating texts may sometimes take away what 
seemed to be their helpful reference to us, it will as 
certainly disclose great principles of God's character and 
relation to mankind, which shall be a thousand times 
more helpful. It is as irreverent to persistently use a 
Word of God otherwise than as He meant it, as it would 
be to secrete a bit of the bread of the Sacrament for 
magical purposes. 

The right use of Holy Scripture, by which patience 
and comfort may be got, will appear from three facts. 
The first is that the Bible tells us of a Beneficent Pur- 
pose of God, which is older than the worlds, has been 
advancing and doing its work in every age, and has con- 
tinually become clearer and more effective. To feel this, 



PATIENCE AND COMFORT 177 

if we know Sacred History, we have only to think of our 
Bible. If we are not familiar with Sacred History, we 
should carefully study it. This gives an interest even 
to the dry chapters of genealogies and measurements. 
All the way through there is but one thought — the com- 
ing of the Kingdom of God, the constant interposition 
of the Most High in the affairs of men in order to ac- 
complish something that was in His mind from the be- 
ginning. Promise is added to promise, order succeeds 
decay, one leader rises after another, there is Law and 
Gospel, there is Mercy and Punishment, but from end 
to end there is One Purpose. 

Two considerations you ought to bear in mind : the 
immense contrast between the thought which underlies 
even the first books of the Bible and the most cherished 
beliefs of every other religion. — How infinitely more 
sublime ! How strange too that while the people among 
whom the Bible was taking shape wavered between cor- 
rupt idolatries, the conception of their True and Holy 
God, unseen and spiritual, to be worshipped spiritually, 
punishing and yet loving them so tenderly, was insisted 
on more and more clearly by successive inspired teach- 
ers. The second consideration is the entire practic- 
ability of His religion in spite of its sublimity. The 
sphere of obedience was in the duties of home and 



178 SUMMER SERMONS 

neighbourhood and country; and there was abundant 
provision for the restoration of those who erred. 

The thought of this purpose alone, gives patience and 
comfort. I look at this Book; I remember the many 
ages which have contributed to it, the testimony it bears 
to the same faith and hope in all of them, the proof that 
God continually raised up witnesses and servants; I 
cannot but feel a presence more than human in the his- 
tory of men, a Purpose above our plans, which so links 
together the deepest aspirations of all the earnest who 
have ever lived ; and the Book satisfies me that the Pur- 
pose was merciful — Salvation through Jesus Christ our 
Lord. My trials fade; my hopes revive; I take refuge 
in the Heart which the whole world rests upon ; I Tcnow 
that all things must work together for good to them that 
love God. 

The second fact is that the Bible is a series of bio- 
graphies. It is a collection of histories, written by men. 
Nearly every period is made to cluster around certain 
representative men, — in one age, Abraham, in another 
David, in another Elijah is the centre. Each of these 
books betrays the peculiarities of its author. It is not 
hard to distinguish the hand of a priest in the Chroni- 
cles or to find a difference between the Shepherd Amos 
and the nobleman Isaiah. The prophecies betray the 



PATIENCE AND COMFORT 179 

stirring events of the times in which they were written, 
the immediate dangers which pressed upon the writers, 
and their personal experiences, as well as foretell the 
Kingdom of God and give eternal principles of wisdom. 
By fine touches the characteristics of the great person- 
ages are conveyed. Each of these great men, each being 
in a sense our representative too, had to meet the same 
fundamental questions of belief and conduct which per- 
plex us. Look at the questions between Abraham and 
Lot, Jacob and Esau, Moses and the people he had to 
reduce to an ordered nation, David and Saul and Absa- 
lom and Achitophel and Bathsheba, Solomon and his 
own prosperity, Elijah, Ahab and Jehu, Hezekiah and 
Isaiah, Jeremiah and his people, and those who came 
back from the Captivity. They concern every public 
and private and personal duty. These men are repre- 
sented as under God's direct guidance — He marks, cor- 
rects and suggests their conduct as you do your chil- 
dren's. They ask questions and God answers them. In 
the Gospel we have an account of the intimate life of 
our Lord and His disciples. The Bible therefore gives 
complete data for a philosophy of human life. It teaches 
clearly enough that there are and ought to be some 
things beyond our understanding, that Conduct is of 
the highest value, that we have the pity and sympathy 



180 SUMMER SERMONS 

of the Most High, that, though we are weak as water, 
we may amount to a great deal, we are infinitely prec- 
ious to God ; and therefore it gives us hope. Therefore 
from the lives of these men, if we study them closely, 
we derive patience and comfort. 

Each of these great Biblical personages has a place 
and a mission in the development of the purpose of 
which I have spoken. Each was the embodiment of the 
highest hope of the period in which he lived; each was 
a less and imperfect Christ; and in the contrast be- 
tween their hope and themselves, in the insatiable long- 
ing of their faith, each was a promise of the Coming 
One, in Whom the Hope and the Perfect Life should per- 
fectly coincide. In this series of biographies our Lord 
is peculiar, because He was and He only claimed to be 
the culmination and the complement of every worthy, 
every imperfect life. All these biographies were taken 
up into His. Whatever truth had been in any man's 
life, especially if that man had been God's witness to 
his own generation, was found to be a promise of a 
higher truth in our Lord's. He was the Second Adam ; 
as Abraham had been the Father of the Faithful, He 
became the Head of a peculiar people ; He was the Me- 
diator of a better covenant than that of Moses ; the king- 
dom of David expanded into a Kingdom that cometh 



PATIENCE AND COMFORT 181 

not with observation, his sufferings prefigured a Divine 
Agony; and their sacrifices received a meaning beyond 
our power of thought. He also touched every possible 
question, though He drew the answer out of His own 
heart. His character is the Ideal. It is absolutely 
perfect. He was most manly; He was most womanly; 
He never was weak; He never was selfish. The devel- 
opment of His character was ideal. If He was tempt- 
ed, if He was made perfect through suffering, if some 
things were hidden even from the Well-beloved Son 
during His humiliation, it is clear that this must be 
the way through which God will bring any son to 
glory. And He at length has become the Means and 
the enduring Victory of God's merciful purpose. 

To those who have sought it there, I need not say 
that patience and comfort are to be got from Christ. 
If He dwell in our minds and in our hearts, if He be 
the end and the beginning of our endeavour, we shall 
have hope — a hope which shall glorify whatever we 
suffer and whatever we have to do. How sweet to en- 
dure, how glorious to be called to attempt, that which 
God first of all appointed to His Well-beloved Son! 
Here only can be the Truth of life! 

His coming shows how wise the hope of the Old 
Testament worthies was. The satisfaction of their 



182 SUMMER SERMONS 

hope encourages us to hope also with those who have 
fallen asleep in Jesus. The Gospel of Christmas is a 
bright light playing through all these promises. Care- 
ful thought upon them traces the principles of the Bible 
throughout our lives ; and we shall wonder to see a fresh 
Gospel unfolding there. 



SEKMON XIX. 

An Antidote to Grief. 

Luke 7: 12-15. Now when He came nigh to the gate of the city, 
behold, there was a dead man carried out, the only son of 
his mother and she was a widow: and much people of 
the city was with her. And when the Lord saw her, He 
had compassion on her, and said unto her, Weep not. And 
He came and touched the bier: and they that bare him stood 
still. And He said, Young man, I say unto thee, Arise. 
And he that was dead sat up and began to speak. And 
He delivered him to his mother. 

[Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity.] 



Our Lord, attended by a great number of people, 
came suddenly on this funeral. The widow was accom- 
panied to the burial of her son by a great multitude 
from the city. They pitied her. And Jesus, as soon 
as He saw what the procession was, and took in the 
miserable condition of the bereaved mother, pitied her 
too. At once He acted. He said to her, Weep not ; He 
came and touched the bier; He bade the young man 
arise ; and the dead sat up and began to speak. 

We have here a lesson in regard to death. In the 
wonderful series of Gospels we have been studying, our 
Lord has taught us charity to others, thanksgiving to 



184 SUMMER SERMONS 

Him, confidence in God; and now He fixes on a daily 
fact. What would our religion be worth if it did not 
meet for us the question of death, — a question that in- 
trudes itself into every home, and knocks at every heart ! 

But the lesson of our Gospel is not about death 
in general. On the other hand, every one of us ought 
to prepare for his own death. It is appointed unto 
men once to die, but after this the judgment. That is 
a truth to be impressed on each of us. Like this young 
man we will be carried out some day; and some day 
will meet the Lord and hear His voice. We must all 
appear before the judgment-seat of Christ. But this 
is not the particular lesson here. 

The point of the Gospel is indicated by the rela- 
tions of this dead man. The lesson is concerning the 
death of a member of a family. He was the only son 
of his mother ; and she was a widow. The Epistle for 
the day illumines the Gospel. There we begin with a 
reference to God, from Whom the whole family in 
heaven and earth is named, and are led on to the 
love of Christ which passeth knowledge; and the way 
to the perception of this is through being rooted and 
grounded in love. These three particulars will be 
clearly seen in the Gospel as we proceed to study it. 
In it our Lord does not strip to grapple with death 



AN ANTIDOTE TO GRIEF 185 

simply. It is not here principally that He brought life 
and immortality to light. But He grapples with grief, 
with a particular sorrow, the sorrow of one who had 
but this one to love, the sorrow of a mother for her only 
son. The sundered tie ; the unhealabie wound ; her loss 
of her last earthly support; these were the elements of 
her grief. Before He spoke to the dead, Jesus spoke to 
her, and said, Weep not. 

This widow's grief is not an uncommon instance. 
Very often death takes away from people all they had 
to depend on in this world. It tears the tenderest 
love apart, and changes the whole condition of a family 
at a blow. We are dumbfounded by the misery it 
brings. As we go to desolated homes, we cannot trust 
ourselves to say words of comfort : they seem so hollow. 
The melancholy reflection that this is the lot of all, 
only mocks grief. And where is the happy family that 
must not be dissolved: where are the lovers death will 
not part: what jealous and desperate affection can be 
a shield against him? It is therefore well to consider 
what our Lord did in view of such grief. Observe, He 
had compassion on it; and He exhibited power over 
death. His was not a helpless pity like ours. He 
wakened the dead and gave him back. I take this as 
our Lord's declaration that He is not unmoved by our 



186 SUMMER SERMONS 

tears in such a case. He pities us. And, being able to 
undo death, He undoes it for us in the way that is best 
for us and for those who die; and if for a while He 
seems not to undo it, it is because that temporary sepa- 
ration is best. 

Let us clearly acknowledge that, things being as 
they are, there are a thousand reasons why men ought 
to die. A green old age is very beautiful ; a loving and 
unbroken home too; but a time must come when life 
is too burdensome and lonely — being crowded with new 
lives; and it is good that God has provided that we 
should go up higher. I observe that though the Lord 
demonstrated that He can raise the dead, though He 
rose, though He called back a few and put it into His 
disciples' power to do the same, He did not alter the 
order of nature, but let men die; — and that so it will 
be till that new order of things when death shall be no 
more. And since He left it so, I think it best; and I 
can see how unfair it would be to call men back and 
make them grind in this prison-house again ; how unfair 
to expose them anew to temptation, and to cut them off 
from that better progress which at death they may 
have begun. But, if Christ did not ordain that from 
His coming there should be no more partings, no more 
funerals, He made it clear that those who sleep in Him 



AN ANTIDOTE TO GRIEF 187 

abide in a love which is in every way stronger than 
death. 

Our Gospel therefore shows us an answer to both 
particulars in which the death of a member of a family 
can be a severe blow. On the one hand, if we grieve 
for one we love, as this mother grieved for the only 
child she had, and for all that had been left to her love, 
the answer is that our dead abide in the love of Christ. 
They are not beyond His voice. They are not out of 
His power. The place into which they have gone, is 
the kingdom of His compassionate love. This is in- 
tended to still our grief on account of them. And, on 
the other hand, if we are amazed by our loneliness and 
helplessness, the strong arm and cheery voice on which 
we had depended or set our hope for the future being 
taken away; we have the assurance that in this life we 
abide under the care of Christ. Trust God for them; 
trust Him for yourselves; that is the lesson of the 
Gospel for those who weep for the dead. 

But there are other considerations which interfere 
with simple faith. Our Lord lived among poor people, 
many of them rude ; and He knew well enough the 
harsh way in which they reasoned about these things. 
He knew that not every death made them sorry; that 
it was often the loss of support instead of the wrench 



188 SUMMER SERMONS 

of affection for which they were sorry; that not every 
family was united by undisturbed affection. He knew 
as well as you and I do that sometimes death brought 
relief — relief from the daily load of one who troubled 
the family, or rest to one who had too long borne the 
burden. He knew that it would have been a terrible 
thing to a family if He had wakened some from their 
biers and given them back to those who were decently 
following them to the grave. And He knew too that 
some who die were so miserably unworthy, and so care- 
less of all God has said and given, that the most devoted 
and merciful affection seeks in vain for some encourage- 
ment to believe that when they die there is hope for 
them beyond the grave. These are terrible things to 
say; but they are terribly true; these make our tears 
so bitter; and when this Gospel is read, and this com- 
fortable truth is preached, these awaken a bitter ques- 
tion in many a heart and cry out to Jesus for an answer 
and for consolation. 

And I would bring this fairly and plainly before 
the conscience of all. If this widow's son had been a 
good son, well might she weep for him ; but even while 
she wept might she entrust him to God; but if he had 
been a bad son, ungrateful, disobedient, lazy and 
vicious, well might she weep for him, but how could 



AN ANTIDOTE TO GRIEF 189 

she hope ? A grief filled with regrets ; a faith troubled 
by apprehension ; what can we say to that ? If Jesus 
gave him back to her to fulfil the promise of a gracious 
boyhood, well. Or perhaps, was it a greater mercy to 
afford an opportunity to amend a graceless youth, and 
to come to death with less of shame ? — So, my friends, 
who hear this lifegiving word of the Lord of Life, our 
dear Master says to you today, Arise. He speaks to 
you as to members of households that ought to be Chris- 
tian. Whether you are fathers or mothers, or sons or 
daughters, He touches you, and gives you back to your 
homes and duties — that you may be faithful there, or 
that you may have opportunity to make right what 
hitherto you have neglected and blasphemed. 

We cannot tell whether this young man and his 
mother recognizes the new, or newly-sanctioned, law, 
which should govern their life together after Christ had 
recalled him from death and given him back to her; 
but is it not clear to us that every day should have been 
cleansed by their common prayer, and every thought 
and purpose they had in reference to each other ought 
to have been clinched by His Commandment? And 
we are not ignorant — are we ? — that we stand in our 
households in exactly the mutual relation of these two, 
whom Christ had anew given to each other. What 



190 SUMMER SERMONS 

other meaning has Christian marriage — except that over 
and above the mutual affection that brought man and 
woman together, Christ, Christ Who redeemed us from 
the kingdom of darkness, there gave them to each other ? 
What did our Baptism mean, except that Christ there 
delivered us from death and the devil and entrusted 
us to our parents and homes. Animals are not brothers 
and sisters as we are. The ungodly are not such fam- 
ilies as we ought to be. Of God the whole family in 
heaven and earth is named. And every natural rela- 
tion in which we stand to one another, has been altered 
and transfigured by the blessing and commandment of 
God. Now it cannot be doubted that to enjoy an un- 
clouded confidence in the promises of God, we should 
try to maintain an unbroken conformity with His Law. 
That we may enjoy the compassion of this Master of 
death and grief, we should abide in Christ. That our 
love may not plague us with regrets for that which 
death will have made unalterable, that our faith may 
not be terrified by the impossibility of the fulfilment of 
God's long-suffering love, that as we follow our dead 
to the grave we may be glad to meet Christ, let us live 
in and with Him always, in our untroubled and happy 
days, and in our earnest days. I say not only, Be such 
a father, and such a mother, as you ought to be ; or such 



AN ANTIDOTE TO GRIEF 191 

a son, or such a sister ; but so order your home, the com- 
mon life of your family. I say with all confidence, that 
the family which recognizes as its first and master-law, 
that of God the whole family in heaven and earth is 
named, will have but little real, and no inconsolable, 
sorrow, as one after another may be called closer to 
Him, to learn more and more of the love of Christ that 
passeth knowledge. It is not only mutual affection that 
is demanded; though this is essential, and it is lovely. 
It is a life lived together in God — a profound sense and 
recognition of His presence and right, and the observ- 
ance of His commandments. 

Such a family can entertain a firm and sweet hope. 
Christ Who will call the dead from their graves, 
will give such back to each other. Their earthly rela- 
tionships will have developed into truar and better rela- 
tionships in the family of God. 

But if there is not such a life — if our relations to 
each other in the home are not according to the Com- 
mandments of God, if here we live without Christ, 
when death comes where shall we be found ? Hurriedly 
we will pray ; and our hope will be broken and fearful. 
Only Christ can give back to us those who die. Only 
in Christ are we bound together with them ; as, indeed, 
only in Christ we are truly united while we live. 



ETERNITY. 



SEKMON XX. 

Eternity. 

Eph. 3: 21. World without end. 



The thought of Eternity belongs to the inner man. 
Our outer life is busied with the things which perish 
in the using. Most of us work for a livelihood or are 
busied with the preparation of the three meals a day. 
Cares oppress us. We read about meat and clothing; 
we labour for them ; we grieve when we lack them. And 
even those who have such plenty that they need not 
work, still give themselves to the acquisition of wealth 
or to the study of things of earth. It is only when we 
live the life of the inner man, a in seasons of calm 
weather", in lonely meditation and in prayer, that the 
thought of Eternity comes upon us ; but it comes upon 
us with wonderful power and authority. 

We measure time in periods, because we cannot 
conceive duration without beginning or end. Therefore 
when Paul wished to say, Forever and ever, he had to 
say, Unto the generation of the seon of aeons, as if he 
thought of age succeeding age, each age made up of 
ages and giving birth to ages ; and was perplexed by his 



19k SUMMER SERMONS 

own thought. Eternity is suggested by the change 
around us. Death and decay suggest that which does 
not die. Successive generations, ages, worlds, force 
us to think of Him Who brought all into being and out- 
lives all. And hard as the thought is and though it is 
not probable other earthly creatures share it, the human 
soul cries out for Eternity, we are unwilling to die, we 
cannot believe that we are ever to cease to be. It is 
impossible for any one who lives much in the inner man 
to believe that sometime he will not exist, — even if we 
were told that after many ages of altered life we should 
at length sleep a dreamless sleep, we could not receive 
it — , we are conscious of a life which belongs to the gen- 
erations of the ages of ages, which is forever and ever. 

If this be true, if the inner man alone cherishes 
this profound truth, then the holy thoughts and aspira- 
tions which belong to the hour of prayer are premoni- 
tions of the future world. We are at such a time like 
a man upon a mountain-top at dawn, who feels breezes 
rich with refreshment, and knows that the mists and 
darkness which now close around him shall ere long 
disclose a boundless expanse of valleys of promise. 

How solemn this thought of Eternity is. A high 
mountain awes us. If we drop a stone into a chasm and 
hear it bound from side to side down and down ever 



ETERNITY 195 



more faintly and yet not seeming to find a bottom, we 
look at each other in silence. On the beach, looking out 
at the sea, wide thoughts come to us and we feel confined. 
So, when we look at the moon in a clear sky. Is the 
thought of Eternity less wonderful — of the ages of ages 
in which this world and its life have so little space, whose 
generations are forever and ever? I read the other 
day that the Sun is shrinking and may be a blistered 
moon after several millions of years. But what are 
millions of years compared with "Forever and ever'? 
We shall perhaps watch the dissolution of this crea- 
tion with such curiosity and slight regret as one stand- 
ing on the shore might feel as he looked at the gradual 
melting of a piece of ice, on which he had lately stood. 
What changes will it require in us? The old 
Greek fable made a man pray for immortality but for- 
get to ask eternal youth; and, when bowed by twice 
an old man's feebleness, to pray again for death. How 
different we shall have to be, unwearied, to outlive the 
stars ; and to add to the experience of millions of years 
the freshness that can taste and use and appropriate the 
vast experiences that will yet come upon us. If now 
each year brings a new and greater joy in whose light 
the past grows dim, or some new sorrow which seeming 
greater than all former sorrows teems with unimagin- 



196 SUMMER SERMON 8 

able riches of comfort and spiritual growth; if every- 
thing we touch abounds in suggestion, and every new 
idea we acquire is met by the recollections, tastes, 
habits and wishes unnumbered which have become part 
of ourselves; what will we be and what will our life 
be like when ages of ages shall have brought their 
wisdom and their culture to us, and we shall look for- 
ward to a greater future as hopefully as a village youth 
starts with staff and bundle to try his fortune in a 
great city 1 What place in our memory will earth hold 
then ? What place, our disappointments and tears ? 
What place, the little annoyance that today has vexed 
us? What place, the noblest object we ever proposed 
to our endeavour ? 

No immigrant ever was lonelier when he stepped 
on the shore of a new country, or shipwrecked mariner 
was more full of wonder as he gazed on the strange 
foliage of the deserted shore where he finds solitary 
refuge, than we shall be, when, having departed this 
life, we enter on that. Who will be our companions 
there ? Who will run that race with us ? How vain 
were the endeavour to picture the eternal life. Our 
inner life is so unearthly, so little used to utterance and 
sympathy, that we cannot expect to find the likeness 
of eternal life on earth. As we go up we can be sure 



ETERNITY 197 



only of the Lord and His Church — for glory shall be 
to the Father in the Church by Jesus Christ unto the 
generations of the age of ages. Not the music or 
words of our earthly songs, but the spirit of our prayers 
and praise, the love and faith which in them find utter- 
ance and which are the pulsebeat to which we keep time 
in all our actions, shall live there too, and make Eternity 
homelike to us and restful — a place where we can 
be true and glad and open. God shall be there and those 
who have been made one with Him through our Lord 
Jesus Christ. This companionship decides the employ- 
ments of the future world. 

Will it be tedious ? An Eternity of song might 
tire — but not an Eternity of the gladness and thanks- 
giving and aspiration and spiritual assurance which 
find voice in song. Life itself shall be rhythmical and 
melodious ; thought will be thanksgiving ; and the vision 
of God will set every fibre of our being into living music. 
And as the years go on, as the ages come toward us, 
each with fresh spheres of duty, each with fresh burdens 
of wisdom, each with fresh knowledge of Him Who is 
the Truth; as we grow to the stature of demigods in 
the fellowship of Him in Whom all the fullness of God 
dwells; we shall be as eager for that which is to come 
as delighted with what we enjoy. 



198 SUMMER SERMON 8 

This rests upon what is called Natural Religion 
as well as upon the Bible. The proof of that endless 
existence is to be found in every man's heart. You know 
you cannot die. You shrink from death. You know 
you shall not only live again, but live forever. Would it 
not be worth while to look more deeply and oftener 
into the chambers of your heart in which this truth is 
dimly written like hieroglyphics of old Egypt engraven 
in a cavern, to see whether there is not more of God's 
writing there as fruitful of hope and duty ? And would 
it not be well to cultivate the inner man who shall thus 
live when the outer man is no more and even the world 
of which it is part shall have ceased to be ; to develop 
those powers which shall find a sphere in the other 
world; and in judging between the inner man and the 
outer, the spiritual world and the tangible, to give its 
value to that which endures forever and ever — to treat 
this ajs a tale soon told, as an episode in a drama ? Let 
those who think of death also think of it thus, — Not 
rest only, but growth ; not release only, but employment ; 
not farewell only, but Godspeed, belong to death. When 
we say Goodbye to the dying, it is with the expectation 
that we shall follow and perhaps in some glorious day 
meet them in all their radiance. 

Such life is inevitable. Even the poor suicide must 



ETERNITY 199 



awake in endless existence. Even he who starves and 
stunts his inner man so as to be unfit for spiritual life, 
must starve and toss there. How dreadful is the 
thought of endless existence without anything worthy 
in it — no hope, no strength; dread of God and dis- 
taste for His Church; and a quenchless thirst for the 
past things of earth. That were a misery beyond words. 
That would make a prisonhouse in which the deathless 
soul would be wild, though no rescuer could break the 
walls of triple brass. 



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